Women and older Australians overlooked despite workers being in high demand

Tech Council of Australia chief executive Kate Pounder. Picture: Jamila Toderas

Would Australia’s huge labour shortage be solved if more young mothers and old people went back to work?

These are two groups where there is potential capacity: women who can’t access enough childcare to take on paid work, and the 50+ workers laid off in earlier downturns or as part of corporate restructuring who have never made it back to the workplace.

The employment options for both groups are worth thinking about this month – not just because the October 25 budget will contain measures to build skills but because on Friday we celebrated Ageism Awareness Day and on Tuesday it’s time for International Day of the Girl Child.

These special days which draw attention to specific groups are now so common they tend to pass without much attention, but these two come as the federal government talks up staggering skills shortages in almost 300 job categories as it lays the groundwork for the budget.

There were 309,000 advertised vacancies in August, 42 per cent more than the same time last year – the kind of numbers that also support a moves on immigration.

Digging deep into pools of people blocked from work for lack of skills, lack of childcare, or unconscious prejudices – ageism, sexism, racism or bias against people with disabilities – is important.

But there are other barriers, including geography: our tourism and agriculture sectors are negatively affected because it’s not easy to move people from cities to regional areas, for example.

There are fewer people looking for work than there are vacancies – a situation we haven’t seen for 40 years. Thus if we want to solve shortages with our existing population, we need to look to people who are no longer seeking work.

That could prove more complicated than simply offering more money or even more childcare. Older Australians could be lured back, but with many accessing superannuation or anxious about working face-to-face because of Covid, the carrots might not work. The assumption mothers would work more hours if they had better, cheaper and more available childcare could also be unrealistic.

In this paper last weekend, Virginia Tapscott wrote about her decision to stay at home with her three children under four, rather than seek paid work.

Tapscott, who lives in rural NSW, argued our society undervalued care of children and said she was tired of being urged to “get back to work”. Her decision was very personal, but might it reflect an emerging attitude among young women not easily convinced about helping to overcome the skills shortage?

Tech Council of Australia chief executive Kate Pounder says women are part of the answer in her sector where only one in four workers is female, and only 25-30 per cent of those in IT courses are women.

Ahead of Tuesday’s celebration of girls, she says she wants to tell young females: “This is your moment … and there’s no better industry (than tech) if you really want to influence the world, if you really want to tackle problems, if you want to work with interesting people. And it’s not the stereotype – these jobs are creative and interesting and they’re really diverse.”

But she puts skilled immigration high on the list of solutions, saying while overcoming shortages is a long-term exercise, there are important decisions in the next six to 12 months “that are going to determine if we put ourselves on the path to getting people into those jobs”.

“Our skilled migration program isn’t working; it’s facing huge backlogs of processing times at the moment. And fixing the backlog is critical, because if we don’t, not only does that stop us filling shortages, it’s skill shortages in very experienced roles. That’s the biggest problem and when we don’t fix that, we don’t have extra supervisors, extra coaches.”

Then there’s vocational training: “That just hasn’t been working. Only 40 per cent of people who’ve been doing those courses since 2018 have got a better job as a consequence, despite the booming markets. We’ve got to fix that.”

The Tech Council has pushed the notion of digital apprenticeships and the government has promised a working group to review the concept, with Pounder hoping for funding in the budget next May.

“I think the third thing is broadening the pool of people who work in the sector,” she says. “Reskilling women in particular is a massive opportunity, but also for older Australians, either reskilling or staying in their jobs longer because these are really important groups of people who bring a lot to the roles.”

Labour shortages take some time to flow through to increased wages but wages are growing, albeit at a level well below inflation. There are also conflicting signals about employers’ willingness to pay more to attract staff.

This week’s Skills Priority List released by the National Skills Commission reported employers suggesting they won’t pay more, with 67 per cent saying they will keep advertising in the same place (if they can’t recruit) and 17 per cent saying they will advertise differently. Only 0.4 per cent said they would respond by increasing remuneration.

That figure is low but needs to be seen in context: the survey relates to a single advertised vacancy. Other surveys, such as one conducted in June by Business NSW, found 47 per cent of companies had increased remuneration of existing staff in the previous 12 months, suggesting employers are working hard on retention.

In a survey from RMIT Online this week, managers said they were forced to overpay new staff. But the report says they are ignoring the real solution – more training and upskilling for existing employees.

The survey, The Salary Trap, says it’s time for “The Great Reskilling” with almost half of managers revealing that even the workers they do manage to hire need training. The survey of 800 managers and employees in August found 46 per cent of managers felt they had overpaid new hires. The related problem was that 40 per cent of workers felt their new colleagues lacked the skills or experience for the job.

But Pounder warns upskilling only goes so far.

“If the job that you’re trying to fill requires under three years experience, then reskilling works. (But) if you’re talking about a job that requires 10 years of experience, and the person hasn’t had any experience in that role, you can’t just re-skill someone to get 10 years of experience.”