Australia’s private job agencies are failing to get jobseekers into long-term work, despite costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year, documents show.
Just 11.7% of jobseekers in Australia found long-term employment through a job provider in the latest financial year, according to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations’ annual report.
Service providers are allowed to claim publicly funded outcome payments when clients have completed four, 12 and 26 weeks in employment – regardless of whether the client or provider found the job.
Guardian Australia has previously revealed many jobseekers who find their own employment were bullied into handing over payslips so providers can claim the public money.
The government sets a target for providers to have 15% of the cohort hit the 26-week employment mark, but the report shows this has not been met since Workforce Australia started in 2022.
“This measure has not been achieved since it was first reported,” the report said. “The result for the 12-month period to 30 June 2024 was 13.2%. “Further, results over two years show a declining trend in the outcome rate.”
The report shows that despite the number of jobseekers who are finding work falling, public funding has increased, with the “investment per employment outcome” hitting $3,575.
The department said the result was based on a caseload of 590,965 people in the reporting period.
In October 2024, the department launched a complaints line for employment services which has received 8,320 complaints across the year.
Jeremy Poxon, a welfare advocate at the Antipoverty Centre, said the system was failing “en mass” to help get people into meaningful work.
“The government knows full well that this system is failing on this basic metric to help people into work,” he said.
It came as Guardian Australia revealed Centrelink has threatened payment suspensions to jobseekers at a rate of five a minute, despite serious concerns from social security experts that they are illegal.
Poxon said the data showed the system was better at punishing people than helping them into employment.
“And still the government is content with funnelling billions of dollars into an employment system that isn’t helping people into employment,” he said.
In the annual report, the government said the low number of jobseekers finding work was influenced by the labour market, with a “growing skills mismatch” between the jobs on offer and the level of training and education people have been able to undertake.
“Throughout the reporting period, the labour market reflected demand for higher-skilled jobs, rather than low-skilled jobs that are most accessible to participants in Workforce Australia Services,” the report said.
Poxon said this was the “great elephant in the room. We’re dealing with a population who are essentially competing for jobs that don’t exist, but are also further structurally disadvantaged by being homeless or culturally and linguistically diverse,” he said.
Poxon called for the whole employment services system to be overhauled, with mutual obligation abolished, payment suspensions stopped and investment in voluntary programs that actually help people find work.
“We’re in this absurd position where the government is spending even more money for even worse outcomes, year on year on year,’ he said.
The shocking state of the job market
As the unemployment rate rises, jobseekers say the search for employment has become automated and impersonal, ABC News found.
Dilhara Sivalingam has had a successful career managing multi-million-dollar contracts for government agencies but, since the pandemic, she hasn’t been able to get a permanent job.
The 49-year-old says the search for employment has become too automated and describes the process as akin to online dating.
“I feel like I’m playing the Tinder of recruitment. When I submit an application, I cross my fingers and look at my laptop.”
“I feel like, on the other side of that laptop, someone’s going, swipe left, swipe left, swipe left. ‘Too expensive, too experienced. Don’t like her name. Two-page cover letter, we only have time to read one’.
“How do you put 30 years of experience into one paragraph … and address all the selection criteria?”
Ms Sivalingam was made redundant in 2021, after almost nine years of service with a leading telco. Since then, she’s only been employed on casual contracts sporadically. She has been out of paid work since October. She tries to stay positive by writing words of affirmation on a blackboard in her home kitchen.
She breaks down crying several times during the interview, saying her mental health is suffering and she could lose her house if she doesn’t get job in the coming weeks.
“I have depleted all my savings,” she explains. “I borrowed money from family to keep me going, but at the end of this month, end of February, I have to ring the bank and say, ‘I can’t afford my home’.
“I’ll be left with a few thousand dollars and that’s got to keep me feeding for three months and paying bills and insurance and whatever else.”
She says in the current employment market there is a disparity between knowledge/skills/age and the jobs available.
LinkedIn’s Australian career expert Cayla Dengate also compares Australia’s jobs market to online dating.
The networking and jobs advertisement platform conducted research between November 27 and December 16 in 2024 among 2,000 Australians unemployed or in full-time or part-time employment.
It found 51 per cent of Australians say they have been ghosted during their job search process.
“About half of Australian jobseekers, tell us that they’ve had that same experience, whereby they match with the job they put in their application for.
“They might even do an interview and feel like they’re getting ready to accept this job and feel like this is going to be their new future, when suddenly they hear nothing back, not even a ‘sorry’.”