Key Points
- A new report has found there are 33 people out of work for each entry-level job in Australia.
- Almost two-thirds of those job seekers were considered to have extra barriers to employment.
- The report also outlined the parts of the country where it's most difficult to find entry-level work.
It's become even harder for unemployed Australians to gain entry-level work — and job seekers in some parts of the country "barely stand a chance" of getting their foot in the door, according to new research from Anglicare Australia.
The organisation's latest annual Jobs Availability Snapshot compared the number of people receiving JobSeeker payments with the number of positions with minimal education or experience requirements advertised in August this year.
It found there were 33 people out of work for every entry-level job — an increase on last year's figure of 26. In 2022, there were 15 job seekers for every entry-level position.
Entry-level jobs accounted for just 10.8 per cent of positions advertised during this year's sample period.
"The proportion of entry-level jobs has really declined over the decade that we've been doing this [snapshot]", Anglicare Australia's executive director Kasy Chambers told SBS News.
"That makes it really very, very difficult for somebody to get a start or get a new start into the workforce," she said.
It's "a particularly difficult situation" for those with extra barriers to work, Chambers said.
Twenty-one of the 33 job seekers vying for each entry-level job were considered to have extra barriers to work — the highest level of competition since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those barriers can include anything from not having tertiary qualifications, being older, taking a break from the workforce to have children, to having disability, speaking English as a second language, or living in a remote or regional area.
"For those people, they're not necessarily going to be ready to jump into a job that requires a four-year degree and lots of experience," Chambers said.
Anglicare Australia's executive director Kasy Chambers says it's a "particularly difficult situation" for those with extra barriers to work. Source: AAP / Lukas Coch
Where it's hardest to get an entry-level job in Australia
While there aren't enough entry-level positions to meet demand in any part of the country, the situation is especially dire in the Northern Territory.
There, 65 job seekers are competing for each entry-level position.
Chambers said the sheer size of the NT was an "extra disadvantage".
"If you are in Darwin and there's a job in Alice Springs … that is a long haul. That's not something you could just pop down for or move for," she said.
Tasmania was the second most challenging place to find entry-level work with 50 job seekers for every vacancy, followed by South Australia with 43.
There aren't enough entry-level jobs to meet demand in any part of Australia. Source: SBS News
But Chambers noted the national competition for entry-level jobs was likely much higher than Anglicare's report suggested, given it didn't include people who were out of work or seeking more hours but ineligible for JobSeeker payments.
"Our figures are actually conservative," she said.
was pushing more people to take on more work, with figures from June showing 6.5 per cent of Australians held more than one job.
How can we make it easier to find work in Australia?
Around two-thirds (62 per cent) of people receiving JobSeeker payments are long-term unemployed — and spend on average around four years looking for work.
Since last year, the number of people receiving the payment increased by 2 per cent.
"That doesn't sound like a lot, but for every single increase, for every extra person on JobSeeker, that's another person, potentially another household or family, who is living on a payment that is around half of the poverty line," Chambers said.
"There's some things that we need to do as a community, unless we're going to consign lots and lots of people to the long-term job seeker pile."
Chambers said one part of the solution was raising the rate of JobSeeker. The maximum payment a single person without children can receive is $778 a fortnight, while couples can get $712.30 each per fortnight — or $1424.60 combined.
"By making it such a low rate … what we're doing is actually making it harder for people to get work because they're drawing down on their reserves, they're having to spend a lot of time moving around, getting cheaper food, they're letting the car go, all these kinds of things," Chambers said.
The government should be looking at creating more entry-level roles and encouraging other industries to do the same, she said.
"When you talk to senior people in government, they're doing a lot of their own admin and things."
"All that admin used to be conglomerated into one job, which made for a job where people could get in, get a start, learn the culture, learn the system, and move onto the next job — but a lot of those jobs have disappeared.
"If you take that first step off the ladder away, it's that much harder to get onto the ladder."
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Chalmers said employment service providers also needed to improve and focus on finding suitable long-term work for people, rather than just trying to put "a round peg in a square hole".
"They're costing the taxpayer a lot of money, but they're not helping people get those roles," she said.
"For people who've got these extra barriers to work, what we know works is some real wraparound care for them … from determining what skills they've got, what interests they've got, and helping them find a job that fits so that they actually stay in that job.
"There's no point in training somebody to be a rocket scientist if there's not that type of work in that person's community."
