Job growth figures nothing to write home about

Above: ACAA chief executive officer, Rod Young.

By Stephen Easton

The health and aged care workforce is leading the nation in growth, but the impressive-sounding figures may simply reflect the normal progression of the already-massive sector as it tries to keep up with increasing demand due to an ageing population.

As reported by the Fairfax newspapers, detailed labour force data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last week showed that 57,200 new workers were employed in the category ‘health and social assistance’ between May 2010 and May 2011, more new jobs than any other sector surveyed.

However, health and social assistance is also the largest employment category surveyed by the ABS, since it overtook retail in February last year, and the area’s job growth of 6.4 per cent in one year was easily eclipsed by the performance of the mining sector, which expanded its workforce by 19.4 per cent over the same period.

The actual employment growth in the aged care sector has been much more modest, and not at all out of the ordinary, according to the CEO of Aged Care Association Australia, Rod Young, who said he had not seen anything other than “the lineal growth that was predicted for the industry”.

“What you do need to be careful of [when looking at job figures], is that we are an employment sector that employs lots of part time people, so we can have a growth in actual numbers but not much in hours worked,” Mr Young said.

“We did have a lot more people looking for work in 2008-09 and I suppose some of that would flow through to 2010 … Due to the GFC lots of people got thrown out of work, so their partners went looking for extra work to make up for lost income. 

“But that doesn’t necessarily flow through to more bodies on the ground [at any one time], if a lot of the employees are part-time.”

More detailed ABS statistics that look at industry subdivisions, released in the same tranche of labour force figures last week, support this view with almost half of the 14,900 new workers in the ‘residential care’ category being in part time positions.

Assistant national secretary of union United Voice, Sue Lines, who represents health and aged care workers, said she found the reports “surprising”, and also made the point that a lot of jobs across the aged care sector were part time and casual, many of which she said were paid “poverty wages”.

“Workers are the glue that holds it all together,” she said. “You cannot provide a quality service if you’ve got high staff turnover and workers who are constantly frustrated because their pay packet is not making ends meet.”

“We’ve got members who work in aged care, who can barely afford their groceries. These are people who half-fill their car with petrol, don’t go on holidays and rarely eat meat. This is really happening the aged care sector.”

Ms Lines expressed confidence that the Productivity Commission’s final version of the report Caring for Older Australians would recommend reforms that leave providers in a position to offer more meaningful careers with better pay, which would help them to attract and retain more staff, but that planning needed to begin now.

Mr Young said many in the sector were expecting strong growth in the near future, but it would be driven mainly by a massive increase in demand, which the Productivity Commission had forecast to roughly triple in the next 30 years, requiring the equivalent of around three-quarters of a million workers.

“[…] But where those workers will come from is anybody’s guess,” he said. 

“The summary from all and sundry is there is going to be enormous growth in this sector over the next few decades, when the baby boomer bulge comes through.”

“[…] The number of people working the sector will be driven by population demographic change, not by some enormous spurt in economic activity. Just the opposite will occur in fact – all those people moving into retirement will mean their contributions to the economy will in some way decline.”

The workforce shortages caused by this demographic change had also raised the issue of ageism, Mr Young added.  

“We need to think about a more positive and proactive approach to hiring older workers, and accepting that just because someone’s over 45, they’re not past it.”