Posts Tagged “experience matters”

Aussie employers ‘giving up’ on tackling talent shortage

A new study has found that although Australia’s talent shortage is continuing to be a prevalent issue, the number of employers implementing a strategy to deal with it is down by 5% from last year.

ManpowerGroup Australia’s tenth annual Talent Shortage Survey, which interviewed over 1,500 employers around the country, found that 42% of Aussie employers are struggling to fill roles.

Researchers found that employers are stepping away from addressing the talent shortage at a rate of one and a half times their global counterparts.

Lincoln Crawley, managing director at ManpowerGroup Australia and New Zealand called this pattern “alarming and disappointing”.

“Globally we have seen the number of businesses taking on strategies to counter the talent shortage increase, while on home soil this number has dropped dramatically over a 12 month period,” he said. “Australian employers are giving up.”

Crawley advised employers to tie a talent shortage strategy in with offering unorthodox ways of working.

“We are observing a divergence across the economy,” he said. “Employers who fail to adopt non-traditional work practices risk becoming irrelevant to the new generation of workers, while those that innovate will succeed.”

Experts at ManpowerGroup Australia shared the following tips with HC on how to address and tackle a skills shortage:

1. Have strong training and development programs so staff are continuously learning and growing

2. Establish realistic and regular incentive programs

3. Promote a family-friendly and flexible work environment while maintaining high standards of work and results

4. Utilise new parents returning to the workforce and consider job sharing to maximise the flexibility they are offered

5. Consider older staff – hiring over 50s qualifies companies for a government subsidy

6. Consistently work on strengthening your company’s point of difference to attract and retain the best in the industry

7. Communicate with your people regularly

8. Don’t forget to praise staff when they do a good job

9. Make efforts to inject fun into the workplace so people are excited and motivated even when times are tough

10. Design medium to long term career plans to give staff visibility to all potential career paths

Employers around Australia reported that the most difficult roles to fill were management and executive positions, skilled trades and sales representatives. Skilled trades have remained the most challenging positions to fill for nine years.

“While skilled trades have continued to be the hardest roles to fill for nearly a decade, the demand profile has changed in recent years,” said Crawley. “Demand for roles like electricians and mechanics has eased, while a shift in infrastructure developments across the country is seeing demand outstrip supply for specialist engineers, labourers and skilled trades in infrastructure and construction.”

He added that one of the biggest challenges posed to employers was finding “ready-made specialists, rather than investing in developing existing skills”.

Crawley also called for employers to ensure that IT workers are being invested in so that they can reskill to remain relevant, adding that many IT roles are becoming obsolete.

According to the study’s findings, employers are aware of the constraints that skills shortages are putting on their company despite their apparent reluctance to take action.

Forty-six per cent said that skills shortages were reducing their ability to serve their clients, 33% said they were a hindrance to their organisation’s productivity and competitiveness, and 23% said it lowered employee engagement and morale.

The ten most difficult jobs to fill in 2015:

1.     Skilled trades
2.     Management / executives
3.     Sales representatives
4.     Engineers
5.     Technicians
6.     Labourers
7.     Accounting and finance staff
8.     Drivers
9.     IT Staff
10.   Secretaries, PAs, receptionists, administrative assistants and office support staff

Source: HC Online

Employers need more than money to hire older workers

Beyond being told or incentivised to hire older workers, employers need to feel they are making the right decision. Image sourced from Shutterstock.com

With Australia’s official retirement age heading to 70 by 2035, this year’s federal budget brings forward incentives designed to encourage companies to employ older workers.

The Restart Program, which provides $10,000 to employers to hire over 50s will have payments accelerated, and the government will also provide incentives to older unemployed people to retrain in order to get a job.

The measures go part of the way to addressing the challenges faced by older workers, but come amid ongoing age discrimination in Australia.

Empirical evidence suggests negative stereotypes are at the heart of this form of ageism. Such stereotypes are found among employers as well as the community at large.

Ageist attitudes and related stereotypes are a general socio-cultural phenomenon and are not confined to the workplace, meaning employers’ attitudes toward older workers are simply a reflection of a broader worldview. Being in positions where their decisions have direct impact on the lives of older workers, however, means their views attract more attention than those of other people.

It is not the intention of employers, who typically seek the best person for the job, to discriminate against older workers. But stereotypes are activated automatically in response to cues. For example, a person’s age, appearance, or date of graduation from school are all relevant cues that impact perception and judgement. Despite best intentions, employers’ judgement can be automatically biased by ageist stereotypes so they may miss the best person for the job in cases where it happens to be an older worker.

Common interventions to address ageism toward older workers have been in the form of policies, legislation, and fact sheets, with the former aimed at enforcing fair practice and the latter providing information. Policies, however, provoke resistance to change when people are being told to think and/or behave in particular ways and feel their free choice is threatened. Fact sheets, incongruent with employers’ worldviews, are often perceived as incorrect.

Getting past stereotypes

There are however ways to promote positive attitudes toward older adults among employers and increase the likelihood of them being hired.

One intervention tested successfully involved inducing cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a mentally unsustainable state that is evoked when a person holds two contradictory thoughts and/or beliefs simultaneously.

People are naturally driven to reduce cognitive dissonance, so much so that it often results in them either changing their attitude or further affirming their initial positions.

In our study we made employers aware that discriminating against older workers was potentially counterproductive and against our culturally enshrined value of a “fair-go”. Having been asked to endorse this view and provide their names, employers were advised they would be listed as people who opposed hiring discrimination against older adults and who were committed to non-discriminatory practice. This meant they would ultimately experience cognitive dissonance in response to activation of negative stereotypes in subsequent considerations of older workers.

We also developed fact sheets based on common misconceptions about older workers. Combining the cognitive dissonance aspect with the fact sheet produced the strongest effect.

Employers who participated in this part of the study showed more positive attitudes toward older workers overall, stated that they were more than likely to hire older workers, and considered age to be less important in making hiring decisions.

Attitudes are said to be relatively resistant to change, but by refuting misconceptions and enabling cognitive dissonance to be evoked in employers, we enabled them to maintain a sense of self-integrity as well as professionalism because these were now aligned with fair treatment of older workers.

Ultimately, it was the internal motivation of hiring decision makers that made the difference, as opposed to dictating to employers how they should behave. The next phase is to discuss various ways the intervention could be implemented.

2015 Budget initiatives to assist older workers

jobactive

From 1 July 2015 the Australian Government is introducing new employment services called jobactive. These services will replace Job Services Australia to help more job seekers find work and be more responsive to the needs of employers by preparing job seekers with the skills and attributes that employers are looking for.

Under jobactive, job seekers on income support will have access to tailored assistance from a jobactive provider based on their assessed needs. This could include help with looking for work, writing a resume and preparing for interviews, referrals to jobs and training that is suited to the skills that local employers need. People looking for work who are not receiving income support may also be eligible to receive some services under jobactive. For more information, job seekers can contact the National Customer Service Line on 1300 854 414.

Employers will be able to receive assistance from jobactive providers to help them find staff by screening and matching job seekers to available vacancies and by providing support once a new employee starts. These services are provided at no charge and employers may be able to receive financial help through a wage subsidy when they employ an eligible mature age, young, long term unemployed or Indigenous job seeker.

Restart

The Restart programme is a wage subsidy paid to employers to assist mature age people participate in the workplace at the same time as encouraging employers to expand their business and benefit from the wealth of experience mature age workers bring. Job seekers who are 50 years of age or older and have been unemployed and on income support* for six months or more can attract a Restart wage subsidy for an employer. Eligible mature age job seekers employed for 30 hours can attract the full rate of the Restart subsidy, and those employed between 15-29 hours per week can access a pro-rata amount.

As part of the ‘Growing Jobs and Small Business Package’ announced in the 2015 Budget, the Restart wage subsidy has been redesigned to make it easier for employers to access. From 1 November 2015, employers will be able to access the full subsidy of $10,000 (GST inclusive) over 12 months instead of the current two years, when they employ an eligible job seeker. The Restart wage subsidy will include up to $6,500 paid during a 12 month period and a bonus of up to $3,500 for employment which lasts the full 12 months. Employers already making use of Restart will also be able to transition to the new arrangements.

As part of these improvements, employers no longer need to wait until the end of a six month qualifying period to access their first payment. Payments can be made progressively, as frequently as fortnightly if needed. This will particularly help small business at the time when their hiring and training costs are greatest. Large employers who take on at least ten or more mature aged staff will also be able to negotiate the timing of payments to help meet the specific costs associated with hiring multiple staff, including lump-sum payments covering multiple employees. For more information: https://employment.gov.au/changes-restart-wage-subsidy

Employers will be able to contact a local jobactive provider to discuss the unique requirements for their business from 1 July 2015. For more information, employers can contact the Employer Hotline on 13 17 15 or visit the Department of Employment website at www.employment.gov.au/jobactive.

* Newstart Allowance; Parenting Payment; Disability Support Pension; Bereavement Allowance; Widow Allowance; Carer Payment; Special Benefit; Partner Service Pensioners; War Widows; Age Pension; Mature Age Partner Allowance; Wife Pension; Widows B Pension

7 Things I Learned About Friendship From Working In An Intergenerational Office

I am 65, and for the past four years, HuffPost’s office in Los Angeles has been my work home. I am the oldest breathing soul in the building, something that I’ve grown accustomed to. I happen to like my officemates a great deal — and believe that that affection is reciprocated. But without a doubt, being the oldest employee comes with some distinctions — and life lessons. Here are a few:

1. You don’t have to be in the same life stage in order to be friends with someone.
Right now, we are celebrating two recent engagements in my office. Marriage proposal stories are such fun to hear, especially if you are a boomer who came of marriage age at a time when getting down on one knee or asking the woman’s parents for permission would likely have revoked your commune membership. Since my own husband asked me centuries ago to marry him with something like “Wanna?” I appreciate the thoughtful care that went into Ashley and Meredith’s proposals.

I am also genuinely interested in hearing the details of the weddings-in-the-works. I find myself cautioning them to not lose sight of the marriage in planning for the wedding.

In my current life stage, I’m preparing for our oldest child to leave for college in a year. My officemates have a wealth of information about the college application process and the college experience itself since it wasn’t that long ago for many of them. When my daughter applies next year, she will have benefited from the collective wisdom of these fairly recent graduates.

Our milestone events may not be the same, but the enthusiasm we have for one another’s important occasions is real. They came to my son’s Bar Mitzvah ceremony and I almost made it to Anna’s first-house party.

2. I don’t have to go to karaoke night to be part of the group.
Every office has a culture. Ours has a hipster vibe, where fun is encouraged. We work hard and we play hard. We have game nights and cocktail-tasting events. We have drink carts on Thursdays, share free bagels on Fridays and have corporate days where we volunteer. I pick and choose my spots but am always included by all. I like that. It’s the way it should be — even if I don’t show up most of the time.

When you think about it, we’ve always compartmentalized our friends. I have Mom friends and friends from my single days. I have friends from within the world of journalism and friends who are neighbors. I also have movie friends and hiking friends and trying-new-restaurant friends. I think it’s fine for boomers to have millennial friends.

3. If I’m their mentor, they are my educators.
I’m maternal by nature, which means I like to share the experience of my years — mostly about life, but sometimes about work too. And of course old dogs can be taught new tricks. Which makes us perfect. I like to think that I push the bar up journalistically here in the office. With my colleagues’ help I’ve become one of those 65-year-olds who knows more about the Internet than all her same-age friends.

4. We share indignation.
Except for my insistence that real music died about 10 years after Woodstock, our views are largely aligned. One thing I love is their support whenever I go off on age discrimination. Think about it: Many millennials can’t get their foot in the corporate door and many boomers like me have no plans to go anywhere. That alone could trigger animosities among lessers.

But in our case, they share my indignation over the small stuff that makes me explode. For example, companies that recruit for “digital natives.” I love that expression — digital natives — except when I see it in a job posting. Digital native means someone who was born with a cellphone in his or her hand. It’s been showing up lately in job postings when the company wants to hire someone young and has been cautioned against by H&R offices worried about age discrimination suits. I’m not sure how long the term “digital native” will be around, but I do know that my young friends agree with me that older people have a place in the workforce — and that we in fact enrich the office.

5. I am a walking history book, and they are the future chapters.
As digital natives — well, they are — they often encourage me to talk about the good old days of print journalism. They were shocked when I told them how 35 years ago, a county judge in New Jersey booted me out of the courtroom where I was reporting on a trial because I was wearing a pant suit. Ladies, he told me, wore skirts to his court and to do otherwise was showing disrespect. The next day, every female reporter I knew came to court with me — all of us wearing pant suits.

My young colleagues were equally stunned when I explained how I was told that I couldn’t be promoted because to do so would take a paycheck out of the hands of a “family breadwinner,” and how more than once I was asked why I didn’t just get married and have kids.

From my colleagues, I have learned how the new dress-for-success look is often my jeans and boots. They are my go-to resource for all things current. I now know where to shop, eat, drink and vacation. Heck, I even got Netflix to be able to join in the conversation.

6. Cash v. Card.
This continues to be our big divide. What is it with millennials and their aversion to cash? They all use plastic all the time for everything, including buying a soda off the food truck. I carry cash. It comes in handy for handing over to a mugger, which is precisely why I suspect they don’t carry any.

7. Technology made our lives easier.
At the risk of sounding trite, there really is an app for everything. And I thank my young colleagues for sorting through the clutter and letting me know which ones will really make my life easier. I knew about Uber, but not UberEats — which delivers a fresh lunch to my office in under five minutes. (H/T Joe Satran, HuffPost Taste writer.) From Healthy Living writer Anna Almendrala I learned about Withings, an interactive app that tracks your exercise, food, steps, weight, etc. She also was the first one to show me MyFitnessPal. And I’m a total fan of Venmo, a peer-to-peer money transfer system.

Probably more to the heart of things, they taught me that technology isn’t the big scary beast that so many of my own-age peers feel the need to dismiss disparagingly

Source: Huffingtonpost.com

Federal budget 2015: Mean-spirited say older workers and migrant pensioners

National Seniors Australia chief executive Michael O'Neill says pensioners are bearing the brunt of the budget. — National Seniors Australia chief executive Michael O’Neill says pensioners are bearing the brunt of the budget. Alex Ellinghausen

by Sally Rose

Seniors groups have come out swinging against the 2015 federal budget arguing it unfairly targets older Australians, with measures that impact mature-aged workers and migrant pensioners among those in the firing line.

Consumer lobby group National Seniors criticised the budget for slashing $2.4 billion from pensions, cutting over $50 million from aged care, and tinkering with incentives designed to encourage employers to hire older workers.

“Older Australians are bearing the brunt of budget cuts, and they have every right to be disappointed,” National Seniors chief executive Michael O’Neill said.

Council of the Ageing (COTA) chief executive Ian Yates said older Australians will welcome confirmation that the government has dropped “unfair” changes to pension indexation and given them more choice and control in how they receive aged care at home, changes to employment incentives and cuts to dementia care would be less popular.

Mr Yates said he was particularly disappointed with the government’s changes to its flagship mature age employment scheme introduced last year.

Employers who hire an eligible worker aged over 55 years through the Restart Allowance scheme will now be rewarded with the full $10,000 subsidy after one year, rather than two.

CHURNING

“This could lead to some employers churning older employees on short contracts so employers benefit from the incentive but the workers become unemployed again. It is also disappointing that the incentives still only apply to older people who have been unemployed and on income support for six months. Earlier eligibility would make candidates more attractive to an employer,” Mr Yates said.

Advocates were also critical of a decision to combine the administration of the Restart Allowance scheme with other employment programs targeting younger workers.

“The budget claims a $120 million saving from this reorganisation but it is not clear where that saving will come from. We are worried it will mean a reduction in funding for Restart and argue that older workers need a dedicated program,” Mr O’Neill said.

Separately, a move to slash the amount of time per year retired migrants will be allowed to spend living outside Australia without having their aged pension rate cut has also drawn criticism for being unfair and potentially discriminatory.

OVERSEAS

As it stands, aged pension recipients who have lived in Australia for less than 35 years since the age of 16 can spend up to six months a year living overseas before losing part of their benefit. Under the new rules this threshold will be cut to just six weeks.

“It is a very mean-spirited approach that unfairly singles out Australians who were not born in this country,” Mr O’Neill said.

Aged pensioners who have lived in Australia for more than 35 years will retain the ability to live overseas for most of the year without losing their pension.

The new rules are forecast to save the budget $168.6 million per year from 2017.

“It seems like a very harsh cut for the people affected without a very clear rationale as to why it is being done,” Mr Yates said.

Source: AFR

Mature-age contribution worth billions while giving back

Rachel Kent, a former IT consultant, volunteers to help other seniors in Sydney.

The employment of Australians aged 45 and older is said to be worth $27.4 billion each year, through reduced human resources costs.

A new study shows that workers older than 45 help reduce turnover, bringing down recruitment and training expenses, and also serve as a valuable source of informal care while giving back to the community through volunteer work.

Research funded by the National Seniors Productive Ageing Centre puts the economic value of these contributions at $65.7bn per year, providing a “significant offset” to perceived sustainability issues posed by an ageing population.

The findings, to be released by National Seniors Australia, suggest that a worker aged 45 will remain with an employer 3.7 times longer than a younger worker.

The paper also shows the contribution of Australians aged 45 and older in providing informal care for the elderly or those with disabilities is $20.5bn, while the value of those caring for their grandkids is estimated at $1.5bn.

The involvement of mature-aged Australians in volunteer work is valued at $16.3bn per year, with data showing that 1.6 million people older than 45 volunteer in some capacity for an average of 6.09 hours per week.

Rachel Kent, a 69-year-old pensioner who lives in the inner-Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, gives her time to help senior citizens develop their computer skills, use emails and navigate the internet.

Ms Kent is a former IT training consultant and says she is happy giving her time to help others, particularly older Australians and women who need to update skills upon re-entering the workforce.

“I would like to help older people because they can feel so isolated if they are not using a computer and today with tablets it’s really so much more simple,” she said.

“It was something I always had in mind in when I was working.

“I also like to help women who want to go back to work for whatever reason.”

Roy Stall, a 71-year-old former naval officer, also volunteers up to six days a month at the Maritime Museum in Fremantle and is still active in Asia as a specialist in maritime English.

“I think we make a contribution to the economy,” he said. “Our economic contribution is not often appreciated and certainly what we can contribute back to the community is not necessarily valued in the corridors of power.’’

Source: The Australian

Ageing workers are a resource of growing importance

Date: May 4, 2015

Philip Taylor, Michael O’Neill and Alison Monroe

Much is known about the labour market situation of older workers but no attempts have been made to collate this knowledge in a way that aids government policy development.

Particularly useful would be consideration of how to engender positive attitude change among employers and older people themselves.

Any policy interest in mature-age workers is to be welcomed. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s recent announcement of its inquiry Willing to Work: National Inquiry into Employment Discrimination Against Older Australians and Australians with Disability presents a good opportunity to push the issue further up the agenda. But is this the right inquiry, and what is preventing concerted government action now?

Labour-market age barriers are in sharp focus internationally as governments, concerned with the economic effects of ageing populations, have acted to encourage longer working lives.

In the coming decades Australia’s workforce will experience a significant ageing and, simultaneously, shrinking, bringing to the fore the issue of the employment of older workers. In combination with declining birth rates, the retirement of a large cohort of baby boomers is expected to reduce the supply of skilled workers, contribute to a lowering of workforce participation rates, and raise dependency ratios.

Addressing workforce ageing is rightly viewed as critical to the nation’s economic performance, with the Treasury’s Intergenerational Reports referring to the need to improve mature-age labour-force participation rates.

Strategy development concerning the best use of older workers by the Australian economy is long overdue. Ageism faced by mature workers is certainly an important barrier to their employment, as evidenced by research undertaken by the National Seniors Productive Ageing Centre, but an inquiry centred on this risks portraying older people as victims, taking away any individual responsibility.

Perversely, another risk with the inquiry’s singular focus on ageism and age discrimination is that this may add to the stigma older people may face, confirming public perceptions of them as disadvantaged, and potentially further entrenching ageist attitudes. Also notable is that apparently the inquiry has no interest in ageism and its effects on the young, despite state and federal legislation proscribing age discrimination against people of any age.

A reductionist view of older workers’ labour-market problems as being solely a consequence of ageism also ignores key facets of what is a complex issue. A broader inquiry would be more helpful. This could usefully consider such issues as the employability of older workers and the incentives and disincentives to working provided by the social welfare and pension systems.

Importantly, a substantial amount is already known about the position of older workers in the labour markets of developed nations, including the nature and effects of age discrimination. There is a vast international policy and academic literature stretching back several decades, with major reviews and inquiries undertaken by national governments and bodies such as the European Commission and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

With the field already well ploughed, what then could a new inquiry consider? Much is known about the labour market situation of older workers but there have been no attempts to draw this knowledge together in a way that can effectively inform policy efforts in Australia. Notably, there has been a surge in public policy in the area of ageing and work internationally over more than a decade. Nations such as Finland, Germany, Japan, Singapore and Britain have been particularly active. The challenges these countries are facing are not so different that their actions would not provide potentially useful templates for Australia, where policy work to date has been rather more modest. So the inquiry could usefully take a considered look at what has worked elsewhere.

Particularly useful would be consideration of how to engender positive attitude change among employers and older people themselves. In this regard, internationally several projects targeting industry attitudes to older workers have been undertaken, for example, Age Platform Europe, Combating Age Barriers in Employment, and Employment Initiatives for an Ageing Workforce, funded by the European Union, the Finnish National Programme on Ageing Workers, Age Positive, the Employers’ Forum on Age and the Third Age Employment Network in Britain, and the AARP Best Employers International Award in the US.

Such analysis could help increase the impact of the Corporate Champions program, implemented by Labor and retained by the Coalition, which has been one of the more successful ways of creating action by Australian employers concerning workforce ageing. Above all, what is required is a strategic framework containing evidence-based proposals for raising the labour-force participation of older Australians and government will to act. It is to be hoped that the present inquiry will form part of such a holistic approach.

Philip Taylor is director of the Australian Retirement Research Institute, Federation University Australia. Michael O’Neill is chief executive office of National Seniors Australia. Alison Monroe is chief executive officer of Sageco management consultants.

Source: The Age

Budget 2015: rewards for seniors to stay at work

David Crowe

Political Correspondent

Canberra

Joe Hockey in Adelaide. ‘It is hugely important … giving people the chance to work longer’. Picture: Roy VanDerVegtSource: News Corp Australia

Older Australians will get new rewards for finding work and strong incentives to put off their retirement as the federal government recasts its controversial pension savings in a wider budget reform aimed at boosting the workforce at the same time it helps to cut the deficit.

Federal cabinet has agreed to make faster payments of up to $10,000 to employers who hire older Australians as part of an overhaul of job programs to help tens of thousands of people back into the workforce.

A separate budget measure will give people approaching retirement a new incentive to stay at work for a few more years in the knowledge they could collect a bonus when they choose to claim the Age Pension.

The budget will also spare about two million retirees from an unpopular change to pension indexation, making the savings instead from fewer than 400,000 people with substantial private assets.

The tighter pension rules will mean that most of the burden for the savings will come from retirees who not only own their home but also have hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings, real estate and other investments.

Ministers will argue that the new approach is fairer than the indexation changes announced last year, which would have seen a gradual fall in the pension when compared with wages over the long term and would have raised fears of pushing older Australians into poverty.

The new approach represents a dramatic softening in Tony Abbott’s message on work and retirement, offering help to those who want to work and giving a reprieve to many elderly voters who were alarmed at the prospect of a cut to their payments.

A major initiative in the May 12 budget will be a more generous payment to companies that hire older Australians, fixing problems in a program called Restart to make it easier for mature workers to get jobs.

Employers currently receive $3000 six months after they have hired a worker aged 50 or over and a further $7000 in stages over the next 18 months, but these payments will be accelerated in the new scheme.

Australians over 50 currently have to wait for six months on income support or the pension before they qualify for the job incentives. That will also be shortened under the new rules.

Another new program will be linked to the scheme to offer incentives for training so that older workers will get more help to retrain and take up a job, helping to prevent them falling back on unemployment benefits or pensions.

Joe Hockey has taken the lead on the assistance for mature workers in the wake of a report from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that found one quarter of workers over 50 felt they had been discriminated against because of their age. The Treasurer warned last week that discrimination was far too prevalent, while signalling more recently that the budget would include new measures to help those workers.

“It is a hugely important issue, giving people the chance to work longer,” Mr Hockey said on Tuesday, adding there were a “few things” in play in the budget to address the challenge.

The Weekend Australian has confirmed that the overhaul of the Restart program is one of those new actions and that other measures have also been discussed to give workers more incentives to put off retirement.

A key issue is whether people who keep working beyond the age of 65, and therefore ease the burden on the public purse, deserve a reward when they ultimately choose to claim the Age Pension. Mr Abbott praised an old policy that offered new pensioners a lump sum of up to $49,000 if they had stayed in work and deferred the pension.

Early last month he said that idea was “certainly worth looking at”. Labor closed the Pension Bonus Scheme to new entrants in 2009 because data showed participants would have continued working anyway. Mr Abbott has been considering other ways to achieve the same objective.

Source: The Australian

Joe Hockey: Why isn’t he being grilled about unemployment?

Date: April 27, 2015

With the federal budget just two weeks away, you would expect Joe Hockey would be talking about the jobless.

Photo: Mark Graham/Bloomberg

It’s curious how little attention unemployment has been getting compared with other federal government challenges like tax policy, debt and deficit.

The number of people looking for a job has now been over three quarters of a million for the past nine months – it’s 18 years since Australia had that many people out of work. Last month’s count of the unemployed – 768,600 in trend terms – was 60 per cent more than before the global financial crisis.

With numbers like that and the federal budget just two weeks away, you’d expect Joe Hockey would be talking a lot about the jobless. But in five lengthy media doorstops, interviews and Q&A sessions by the Treasurer last week he was not asked one question about unemployment. The transcripts for those interviews run to more than 7000 words but the word “unemployment” was only uttered once.

While the rate of unemployment has edged down to 6.1 per cent after reaching a 12-year high of 6.4 per cent a few months ago, there are troubling trends in the job numbers. The rate of long-term unemployment – when people have been out of work for a year or more – has been increasing at a faster pace than the total unemployment rate. Data released by the Department of Social Services last week showed the number of long-term job seekers receiving the Newstart allowance surged by 11.2 per cent to 275,725 in the year to March and has touched decade highs over the past few months.

The Fairfax-Lateral Economics Index of Australia’s Well-being has underscored the growing economic and social damage caused by long-term joblessness. In the December quarter alone the national wellbeing cost of long-term unemployment joblessness reached $1 billion. “This problem should be showing up on the dashboard much more than it is,” says the index’s creator and leading economist Dr Nicholas Gruen.

Another challenge largely ignored in the pre-budget debate is that young people are faring worst of all in the jobs market. The unemployment rate among 15 to 19-year-olds hit 20 per cent earlier this year – a level not seen since the mid-1990s. An index produced by the Brotherhood of St Laurence showing the probability of young people finding a job has fallen markedly in the past year. For teenagers, the job probability index is at levels not seen since the deep recession of the early 1990s.

It’s little wonder that the latest Ipsos Mind and Mood report, which has been tracking social attitudes and sentiment in Australia for 35 years, found job security was the biggest worry of those surveyed. The focus group discussions revealed a widespread perception that no one was safe from mass redundancies. It’s a reminder of how much unemployment matters to households.

Over the past four decades Australia’s economic policy guardians at the Federal Treasury and the Reserve Bank have traditionally had to deal with short sharp rises in unemployment. The conventional response has been to slash interest rates and allow the budget balance to worsen as dole payments rise and tax revenue falls. These “automatic stabilisers” play an important role in cushioning the economic blow. Analysis released by the International Monetary Fund this month shows the effective use of automatic stabilisers is of great benefit to economies and leads to higher medium-term growth.

But this phase of rising unemployment has been different as traditional tools for managing unemployment don’t seem to get the same traction. The jobless rate has slowly racheted higher as the economy lumbers at a below trend rate of growth in the aftermath of the mining boom. The Reserve Bank has cut interest rates eight times since 2011 to historic lows and yet the unemployment rate has continued to creep up. The bank’s governor, Glenn Stevens, has warned that the power of interest rates to “summon up additional growth in demand could, at these levels of interest rates, be less than it was in the past”.

Despite all the Abbott government’s tough talk on the need to deal with debt and deficit, its policy response to the upward trend in unemployment has also been quite conventional. Last year’s federal budget scheduled the toughest fiscal repairs to take place years into the future when, hopefully, the economy is stronger.

Hockey has indicated he will allow the “automatic stabilisers” to keep working. Last week he said the government would not cut spending to “chase down” the big revenue write-downs caused by falling commodity prices and that next month’s budget would “support jobs”. “We’ve got to ensure that the work of the Reserve Bank is not at odds with the work of the government, and vice versa,” he said last Thursday. “You can’t have your foot on the budgetary brake and at the same time have the governor of the Reserve Bank with his foot on the accelerator. It sends a mixed message.”

What if this conventional policy response doesn’t work and the dole queues grow longer?

That would leave Hockey with two options unlikely to be very popular with his Coalition colleagues. He could spend more on things like infrastructure projects in a bid to boost employment – although that would push the budget deeper into deficit. The other alternative is structural reforms to make the labour market more flexible, something sure to anger a lot of voters.

The Treasurer must be relieved he’s not being quizzed more about unemployment.

Source: SMH

Australian workers await jobs axe as insecurity soars

THE AUSTRALIAN
APRIL 25, 2015

Sarah Martin

Political Reporter

Canberra

Employees are increasingly expecting to be laid off.

The number of Australians expecting to be sacked in the next 12 months has hit a 10-year high as uncertainty about economic growth permeates the workforce.

Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force data analysed by The Weekend Australian shows that a record 1.2 million Australians do not expect to be working with their current employer in a year’s time, an increase of almost 300,000 people in a decade.

Of those expecting to leave their job, 20 per cent say they fear being made redundant.

The job uncertainty revealed in the new figures — the highest level since 2004 — comes after the unemployment rate dropped to a three-month low of 6.1 per cent last month, and while the economy added almost 38,000 new jobs. The tentative signs of optimism come as the Reserve Bank warns of below-trend economic growth, weak business and consumer spending, and a continuing decline in the country’s terms of trade.

Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre director John Spoehr said the figures exposed a “classic patchwork economy”, with jobs growth strong in some sectors while others were in decline.

The demise of automotive manufacturing — which is linked to as many as 200,000 jobs — a slowing resources sector and public-service job cuts were fuelling the pessimism, Professor Spoehr said. “There is a high level of uncertainty prevailing at the moment,’’ he said.

“It is not clear where the next round of major projects will come from and there is a reluctance to compensate for this using public-sector investment. Many people are likely to be anticipating more difficult times ahead.”

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry director of employment Jenny Lambert said job insecurity highlighted the impact of business confidence on workers.

“Employees are caught up in that uncertainty, which is reflected in this quite significant increase,” she said.

She, too, cited the supply chains for manufacturing and mining, along with public-service jobs, as the sectors feeling most vulnerable. Since 2004, the number of people employed in manufacturing in Australia has fallen from 1.04 million to 911,000, and is forecast to drop to 893,000 by November 2018.

In mining, employment almost tripled from 100,000 in 2004 to 272,000 in 2013, before dropping to 229,000 last year.

While the number of people employed in public administration has grown from 598,000 in 2004 to 726,000 in November last year, about 30,000 jobs were shed in 2013-14.

Ms Lambert said the government needed to respond to the uncertainty being felt across the economy.

“They have got to again build business and economic confidence, they have got to try and paint a stronger picture about the fact that there is scope for growth in the economy,” she said.

Bill Mitchell, director of the University of Newcastle’s Centre of Full Employment and Equity, said the figures reflected a slowdown under way since 2012.

Source: TheAustralian••

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