Aged care reforms would drive an SA jobs boom – if staff can be found, experts say

Demand for staff to fix Australia’s ailing nursing homes is set to skyrocket. But there are growing fears there will be too few to answer the call.

There are fears Australia may now struggle to find staff highly skilled enough to take on the task ahead of them. Picture: iStock

Ageing Australia will drive a surge in demand for nurses and care workers that will force aged-care budgets to more than double to $45bn a year within a decade and skyrocket beyond that, according to a national economic report.

The carer jobs boom in South Australia is set to be larger than that of defence shipbuilding, according to numbers in the report for the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

Deloitte Access Economics says key proposals to the commission will require 40 per cent more workers by 2030.

For SA, the proposals from counsel assisting the commission would likely mean about 10,000 more jobs as part of a national jump from 320,000 to 440,000 by 2030. That would rise to 660,000 jobs in 2050 when aged-care costs would hit a staggering $151bn, the modelling said. But industry leaders fear there won’t be enough people trained to meet demand, as aged care competes with hospitals and disability care for staff.

“The biggest growth opportunity in this state is not the ships at Osborne, it’s actually the disability and aged-care sectors for the next two or three decades,” said Frank Weits, chief executive of SA aged-care provider ACH Group.

He warned the Marshall Government needed to do more now to avoid shortages already looming, with a quarter of existing aged-care workers thinking of retiring and crucial immigrant workers blocked by COVID-19.

Failure to do so would bring “catastrophic” consequences, according to Eldercare chief executive Jane Pickering, who said caring for older Australians as the community wanted “will not happen if we don’t start preparing a skilled workforce now”.

SA’s Innovation and Skills minister David Pisoni said growing demand for aged-care workers posed both a challenge and opportunity, but he would work with Canberra and the industry to ensure training was available.

Aged care, with disability care, employs about 49,000 South Australians, almost 6 per cent of the workforce, and even without the royal commission is forecast to grow by 11 per cent by 2024.

The royal commission – due to report next Friday – has already identified insufficient and undertrained staff as major factors in the poor levels of care being delivered.

Senior counsel assisting the royal commission have proposed a radical shift from a rationed aged-care system with waiting lists, to a four-star-quality, demand-driven one with uncapped places for home care.

Counsel also wants older Australians with a disability to be entitled to the more generous payments available under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The economic modelling says all this would increase costs from $21.5bn this year to about $33.5bn by 2025 and $45bn by the end of the decade. Costs would hit $150bn by 2050.

The money would clear the 100,000-strong waiting list for care packages to help needy older Australians, usually in their 80s, to stay at home. It would also ensure nursing homes were better staffed with better food.

It would also allow a bigger-than-expected 77 per cent rise in people receiving home care packages this decade, doubling to 310,000 by 2050.

The Deloitte Access Economics modelling, which was done before the final submissions, calculated the proposals would cost about a third more than at present, and take 1.8 per cent of the nation’s GDP. Paying for extra care would require a 1 per cent rise in income tax, or a smaller rise in the Medicare levy – measures Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already rejected.

The economic analysis shows a 40 per cent jump in aged-care staff, rising nationally from about 320,000 to 440,000 in the decade to 2030, and to 621,000 by 2050, with a particular need for registered nurses.

Because the NDIS is also forecast to grow, the competition for care staff and nurses will drive up wages by about 5 per cent a year, double the national average, the analysts predicted. While nursing home resident numbers will remain fairly stable, home care packages will surge 75 per cent to more than 225,000 in the next two years.