May 31st, 2016

Just a few years ago, when unemployment hovered at 10%, employers had their pick of job candidates. Getting hired was tough. But now, with unemployment at 5%, it’s a candidates market.

That was just one piece of welcome news I heard last week while attending Indeed Interactive in Austin, Texas, an annual gathering of recruiting leaders and members of the media, eager to learn about the forces shaping the rapidly evolving labor market.

Since Indeed.com is the world’s No. 1 job site and the leading source of external online hires, it has a goldmine of job-related data. Combine that with Indeed’s proprietary research and you get a fascinating assessment of what’s happening in the job market and what you can likely expect in the near future.

2 Takeaways From a Global Labor Market Report

First, the big picture. At the conference, I picked up a copy of Indeed’s Labor Market Outlook 2016, which looked at 12 countries, and came away with two key takeaways: 1) There is a growing disparity between the highest and lowest wage earners due to the growing specialization of the labor force and 2) Tech jobs are hot and increasingly challenging to fill.

“Lots of jobs are disappearing as a result of technology and automation. Up to 50% of U.S. jobs may be at risk due to automation,” Tara Sinclair, Indeed’s chief economist, said at the conference. “But at the same time we see tons of jobs disappearing, millions more are appearing.” Two examples of emerging industries, according to Sinclair: fitness wearables and virtual learning. Along with tech, health care is the “massive elephant in the job creation space,” Sinclair noted.

Sinclair emphasized that job seekers need to adapt to the constantly changing landscape. That means they need to look for ways to apply their skills in fields other than the ones they’ve been in and be open to picking up new skills. She cited the growth of short-term coding schools as one way job hunters can quickly improve their marketability.

3 Bright Spots for 50+ Job Seekers and Workers

Sinclair urged the audience of recruiters to adapt as well. I found three of her recommendations to them especially encouraging for job seekers and workers who are 50+:

1. Offer more flexible work opportunities One way to attract and retain talented boomers, Sinclair said, is allowing them to work flexible hours (including part-time) and remotely. Interest in flexible work arrangements is on the rise. At Indeed, searches for them rose 42% from 2013 to 2015.

Incidentally, contrary to popular belief that part-time and remote jobs tend to be low paying, low skill work, over half of the top 50 keywords associated with searches for flexible work are related to high-skill jobs — many of them in the hard-to-fill tech and health care fields.

2. Consider job candidates without college degrees Sinclair admitted that as a college professor (she teaches at George Washington University), this was a tough recommendation to swallow. But she warned employers that it’s unlikely the pool of college-educated candidates will be large enough to fill job openings in the years ahead.

So if you’re looking for work but lack a college degree, you may soon have a better chance getting an employer’s interest.

3. Find ways to engage and retain older workers Referring to the coming “Baby Boomer Bomb” (aka “the brain drain” due to massive numbers of boomers who’ll retire), Sinclair told the audience: “You are facing a looming shortage of talent, particularly as the baby boomers retire. By 2020, workers age 55+ will likely account for 25% of the labor force. If you think of all those people leaving the work force, it’s likely to have all sorts of economic repercussions. But if you can find ways to engage the older workers and transfer their knowledge to the young, that’s how you can help increase the economic pie in new ways.”

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Nancy Collamer, Contributor

Source: Forbes

Anne Shaw* and her husband love going on cruises, finding ocean travel to be the perfect holiday. But there’s another benefit for the grandmother of four: “It’s a way of escaping without having to say no to requests to look after grandchildren,” she admits.

Shaw isn’t alone: as much as they adore their grandkids, many of today’s nannas and grandmas feel that looking after grandchildren encroaches on their lives or is physically exhausting. Yet most of these women aren’t telling their grown-up offspring how they really feel.

Looking after the grandchildren can be a fraught issue; a complex web spun from conflicting emotions including love, guilt, joy, fear and obligation.

And the reality of doing it regularly – that it’s hardly all bliss and contentment – is such a taboo subject that all the grandmothers interviewed for this article asked not to have their identities revealed.

Baby boomer grandmothers know their Gen X sons and daughters are under significant financial strain. Dual-income families, demanding jobs, expensive childcare and the high cost of living mean mums and dads are turning to their own parents to help out with their kids while they work.

Grandparents provide childcare for almost one-third of children of working parents, according to 2015 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

“In Australia, grandparents are the largest source of informal childcare after parents … Many households could not function without the unpaid input of grandparents,” write Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams in their 2012 book, Time Bomb: Work, Rest and Play in Australia Today.

This is no secret. What’s less well known is how these grandparents feel about and respond to requests for care – especially grandmothers, who usually take the lead in the grandparenting arena (research shows that even when grandfathers and grandmothers provide care together, grandmothers are more likely to take on routine or repetitive tasks such as bathing and feeding).

Janet Gibson*, a grandmother of 10, is frank: “When my first grandchildren were born, it was a pleasure to look after them. It never felt stressful.” But that was more than 20 years ago. Now in her 70s and suffering from arthritis, caring for the grandchildren is very different.

“I love the children but I’m physically unable to do what I used to do,” Gibson says, referring to the fact that it’s painful for her to pick up her baby granddaughter. Despite the difficulty, Gibson and her husband regularly look after the baby so their daughter can work. They’ve never told their daughter the extent of Gibson’s health issues.

Why not?

“Because I feel it would be unfair,” Gibson sighs, referring to the fact that she was very involved in caring for her older grandchildren and wants to treat her children equally.

This desire to help each of their children equally was mentioned by other grandmothers. Although understandable, it complicates the grandparenting experience, especially in large families, because more grandkids means more time and energy from grandparents who are only getting older.

Anne Shaw agrees – over the years her feelings towards grandparenting have changed. “I was so looking forward to becoming a grandparent,” she says. Before her first grandchild was born, Shaw reduced her paid employment from full-time to four days a week.

“I couldn’t give my kids money, so looking after my granddaughter was my way of helping out,” she says.
But 11 years and four grandchildren later, Shaw notices that she gets tired more easily and doesn’t have the patience that she used to. Still, she never says no to requests to look after her grandchildren because she “absolutely loves” seeing them. “I don’t admit it when I’m tired,” she says. “I just get on with it and do what needs to be done.” Now retired, this grandmother says she can simply catch up on sleep if she needs to after the kids leave.

But not all grandparents have this luxury: many juggle care of grandchildren with paid work, leaving them with little downtime.

The number of older women in the Australian workforce has significantly increased over the past few decades.
In the early 1980s, just 10 per cent of Australian women aged 60 to 64 were in paid employment, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies. By 2009-2010, their presence had quadrupled to 41 per cent. (There has also been a small increase in the workforce participation of women aged 65 and over during that same period, from 3 to 7 per cent.)

Jill Westbrook*, in her mid-60s, is a working grandmother of two. For her, the issue of caring for grandchildren is more about how it restricts her income than the physical exhaustion. “I tend to say no to extra paid work because the grandchildren come first, but I’d like to say yes,” she says.

The combination of paid work and care also means Westbrook doesn’t get many free evenings. She wishes she had more time so she could play bridge, go to the theatre or the movies.

So why doesn’t she just say no when she is asked to look after her grandkids?

“Because I love my children and don’t want to see their lives any more difficult,” says Westbrook. “Too much financial pressure can strain a marriage, and if I can ease that I’m very happy. I’m divorced and want my children to be with their partners forever.”

Helen Andersen* is in her early 60s and regularly cares for three of her grandchildren. Of all the women I spoke to, Andersen is the only one who has initiated honest conversations with her children about her grandparenting role.

“I come home from a day looking after the kids and every bone in my body aches,” she says. “I don’t have the energy I used to, and I don’t know if the younger generation appreciates that fatigue.”

Since having that conversation, Andersen’s daughter treats her mother more gently and is more considerate. And Andersen is certain that’s a good thing. “When you’re honest, it’s such a relief,” she says. She believes it’s vital for grandmothers to let their kids know they’re not superwomen, instead of always insisting they’re fine and happy to look after grandchildren.

Andersen also acknowledges how difficult it is to refuse requests for grandchildcare: “You always push yourself because it’s your child,” she says. “The hardest thing to do is say no because we’re programmed to help and love and care and to give support over resting our aching bodies.”

Myra Hamilton, a research fellow with the social policy research centre at the University of NSW, says: “Because grandchildcare is tied up with love, family history, culture and shared experience, setting boundaries around care becomes difficult.”

Dr Briony Horsfall, a sociologist at Swinburne University, agrees there are great expectations on Australian women to be constant sources of care-giving. “These grandmothers are nurturing multiple, intergenerational relationships. It’s quite subversive to say no because there’s a risk of being seen as a ‘bad’ grandmother and a ‘bad’ mother [to adult children].”

Another complicating factor, particularly for paternal grandmothers, is the fear of decreased access to grandchildren if they decline care, especially if it’s a daughter-in-law making the request. Sometimes, it’s easier to play it safe and just lie – as does one grandmother who pretends she is feeling unwell, or says she’s going out.

Of course, it’s not all bad: caring for grandchildren can provide enormous joy and satisfaction. When I asked each grandmother what their ideal care scenario would be, not one elected to opt out of caring for their grandchildren. Rather, grandmother utopia involves fewer care hours; or to spend more time having fun with grandchildren, for example taking them to the park or the beach; or to have extra paid help to do the more physically demanding jobs, such as cleaning and other domestic duties.

A 2015 study, Grandparent Childcare and Labour Market Participation in Australia, commissioned by National Seniors Australia, found there is a tipping point after which providing care becomes less enjoyable: grandparents who provide 13 or more hours of care a week are less likely to enjoy caring for their grandchildren, and more likely to feel the effects on their work and retirement decisions.

But often it’s not so easy for grandparents to reduce their care hours, says Myra Hamilton, a co-author of the report. “The fewer options that adult children have in terms of work flexibility, childcare options and financial security, the harder it is for grandparents to say no to requests for grandchildcare.”

A survey commissioned by the Australian Seniors Insurance Agency found that 58 per cent of grandparents have had to sacrifice their own lifestyle and recreation, and 30 per cent have had to alter their work arrangements in order to care for grandchildren, while 23 per cent said they’d like to look after their grandchildren less often than they do.

Becoming a grandparent is supposed to be the gold medal for surviving the hardships of parenting; the ultimate love affair. But the truth is more nuanced.

“My friends secretly comment about the mind-numbing boredom of grandchildcare,” says Andersen.

“You are dealing with children with brains the sizes of peas. Lots of us held high-powered jobs, were successful businesswomen, so however much you love those sweet babies … how many games of Eye Spy can you play without wanting to rush back to your fabulous novel and a quiet cup of coffee?

“We feel wanted, satisfied with a job well done, loved and delighted in the love we get back,” she says. “But it comes with issues no one discusses and that men never even think about.” •

*Names have been changed.

• In 2013, the average age of becoming a grandparent was 58-60; in 1953, it was 54-56.
• In 2014, 837,000 Australian children were cared for by their grandparents in a typical week.
• In 2014, more than 97 per cent of grandchildcare was unpaid.
  Sources: ABS, McCrindle Research

Next month the Turnbull Government will be asking the Senate to support one of the most devastating attacks launched against poor and vulnerable Australians in recent memory. The Bill – entitled Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015 – proposes to give privately run job agencies unprecedented new powers to financially penalise unemployed and underemployed Australians. If passed the fines will come into effect on 1 July 2016.

Under the proposal, Australians receiving the dole can be fined 10% of their income support – increasing by 10% each day until they ‘re-engage’ – if they:

• Fail to sign a job plan at their first job agency appointment; or
• Are found by their job agency to have behaved inappropriately at an appointment (“inappropriate behaviour” is defined as acting in a manner “such that the purpose of the appointment is not achieved”); or
• Fail to attend a Work for the Dole or Training exercise without an excuse deemed reasonable by the job agency.

All fines (roughly $55.00) will be deducted immediately. Unemployed Australians who feel they have been unfairly fined will be required to go through Centrelink’s arduous appeals process to get their money back – a procedure that can take up to four months.

This means that even if an unemployed worker successfully appeals against a fine – and thousands do every year – they will still be forced to endure up to four months without a significant portion of their income support. As privately run job agencies can effectively impose these financial penalties on unemployed workers before having to provide any concrete proof, the Coalition’s proposal gives privately owned job agencies the power of life and death over unemployed workers.

With the dole already $391.00 below the poverty line according to the Melbourne Institute, for many unemployed workers a 10% deduction of their income support will place them in severe financial distress. If this proposal is passed next month, unemployed Australians will be just one unfair penalty away from extreme poverty and even homelessness

The dole has already been proven to be not enough to live on. A recent report showed that one in four people on the dole were forced to beg on the streets for more than a year, while 6 in 10 were required to approach a charity for help. Escaping this poverty-trap has become almost impossible for unemployed Australians – according to official government figures there are 11 job seekers competing for each vacancy, even more when you consider low-skill jobs.

With unemployment already a one-way ticket to poverty for many Australians, why is the Turnbull Government introducing a bill that will make it considerably harder for unemployed workers to survive?

To answer this question, it is necessary to understand the employment services industry. Comprised of for-profit and not-for-profit companies ranging from billion-dollar corporations like Max Employment to charities like the Salvation Army, the employment services industry has become a highly lucrative business.

Under the Coalition Government’s 4-year $6.8 billion Jobactive program, Government payments to employment services are tied to a variety of ‘jobseeker outcomes’. The most efficient way for job agencies to maximise outcome payments is to ensure that their unemployed ‘case-load’ are, at a bare minimum, compliant with appointments and activities. Clearly the employment services industry has a financial interest in obtaining increased powers to penalise the unemployed.

With these perverse financial incentives already firmly in play, there are a number of well-documented cases of job agencies bullying unemployed workers. Every day, the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union receives new cases of Australians being bullied into unfair activities or appointments by money-hungry job agencies.

Even if unemployed workers are able to muster up the courage to demand that their rights be recognised, job agencies use the threat of sanctions to ensure compliance. With the continued failure of the Department of Employment to effectively regulate the industry and bring bullying job agencies into line, unemployed workers have nowhere to go. This has created a culture of fear and intimidation throughout the employment service industry.

By proposing that job agencies should be given new unprecedented powers to financially penalise unemployed workers, the Turnbull Government is sending a clear message to the employment services industry that these tactics are not only acceptable but should be intensified.

If you have been unfairly fined by your job agency, join the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union legal challenge against this unfair compliance system by contacting them on contact@unemployedworkersunion.com. You can also participate in the AUWU’s Fight the Fine campaign against this bill. Visit the AUWU’s Facebook page for more info.

Updated 26 Feb 2015, 

The Federal Government has clawed back more than $41 million worth of false claims by private employment agencies in just the past three years.

The agencies are contracted by the Government under a privatised welfare-to-work program called Job Services Australia (JSA), a sprawling $1.3 billion-a-year scheme designed to get the unemployed into work.

A Four Corners investigation has found rorting of the scheme is rampant. Forgery, manipulation of records and the lodgement of inflated claims for fees are widespread.

One former agency employee said he had seen “thousands” of jobseeker records doctored by his agency to support suspect claims against the taxpayer.

The managing director of a private employment agency told Four Corners: “There are incentives to be involved in sharp practices from a financial and performance perspective.”

“We had to do the same thing [because] everyone was doing it,” the source said.

“The Government does not want to expose the whole industry.”

Three years ago a top-level inquiry into just one type of fee found spectacular rates of failure, forcing cancellation of that particular fee and prompting industry-wide ructions.

Ominously, the inquiry noted that just 40 per cent of the claims it examined could be confirmed by documentary evidence, or by the testimony of jobseekers and their employers.

The Abbott administration has made some changes to the scheme that take effect mid-way through this year.

But critics say these changes will do little, if anything, to stop widespread gaming of the contract.

In a statement, Jobs Australia said: “A significant portion of the recoveries [were] volunteered by providers who [needed] to rectify minor administrative mistakes.”

But added that “while there [were] legitimate concerns about some aspects of the policies”, more than a quarter of job seekers found a job and exited JSA within three months.

“This is despite the fact that the system is incredibly complex, with a confusing payment model and thousands of pages of rules that must be interpreted and applied by the individual staff who work day in, day out, with people who are unemployed,” the statement said.

The not-for-profit organisation said the new employment services contract would reduce the scope for incorrect claims by simplifying payments.

“With rising unemployment, Jobs Australia believes there needs to be a more flexible arrangement that is firmly focused on getting people back into work – but also with strong checks and balances.”

Only one in 10 enjoy ‘better chance of gaining employment’

The ABC has learned that fraud investigators attached to the Department of Employment have launched probes into many of the major agencies contracted to the program since its inception in 1998.

For-profit companies, including the market leader, Max Employment, have been investigated for particular allegations, as well as well-loved Australian charities including the Salvation Army.

There are a variety of means by which the contract is exploited.

The ABC is not suggesting that any particular agency is engaged in the full range of rorts, or other means by which the contract can be optimised.

But despite a long parade of whistleblowers detailing allegations of the misappropriation of taxpayer funds by some agencies, and highly questionable practices by others, the government has declined to detail instances where it has ever sanctioned any single agency operating under the scheme.

In one case to be examined on Four Corners, investigators were forced to shelve their inquiries when they discovered a departmental official had explicitly told the agency that it could still collect fees for services the Government knew had never been delivered.

Rupert Taylor-Price, whose company provides software to Job Services Australia providers, says the scheme is being routinely “optimised” to the detriment of jobseekers.

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, have been recouped at times by the department,” Mr Taylor-Price said.

“But what the department does is only reclaim those from the failures it finds.

“So even if you are going to put in claims that have a failure rate, you’re still going to have a lot of them not found and keep the money … there’s still an incentive to make the claim.”

He says he believes only one in 10 participants in the program enjoy “a better chance of gaining employment”.

The program was created 17 years ago, when the Howard government effectively privatised the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES).

The new policy created a pseudo-marketplace of jobseekers who were forced under Centrelink’s rules to attend private agencies, which would be paid to find them work.

Since then, more than $18 billion has been spent on the welfare to work program – first labelled Job Network, and now known as Job Services Australia.

It has been a cheaper scheme than the CES, but critics say it has also been far less helpful at assisting long-term unemployed people back into work.

‘You can’t make people search for jobs that aren’t there’

Academics and experts have repeatedly pointed out the glaring paradox at the heart of the program: how can these agencies have any impact on the unemployed when the number of jobless far outstrip the number of job vacancies?

“[The welfare to work program] patently hasn’t worked,” said Professor Bill Mitchell, director of Newcastle University’s Centre of Full Employment and Equity.

“It’s an impossible task … there’s not enough jobs to go around. You can’t make people search for jobs that aren’t there, and that’s the dilemma of the whole system.

“We’ve had a demand-side constraint – not enough jobs – and all this vigorous energy and money being poured into a supply-side initiative as if that’s the problem.”

Periodically, the jobs program has been mired in scandal. A major Productivity Commission inquiry in 2002 made adverse findings about the program, including that the long-term unemployed were being “parked”.

Just three years after Job Network was launched, one prominent job agency was accused of shovelling thousands of people into phoney jobs.

In what has become a pattern, a subsequent inquiry cleared the agency of fraud but demanded the repayment of thousands of dollars.

Insiders have told Four Corners that department managers have been reluctant to tighten up the program’s governing contract to prevent blatant rip-offs.

“It’s absolutely vulnerable to exploitation,” said a former senior departmental investigator.

He said he had significant doubts about the will of successive governments to root out the fraud perpetrated against the contract.

“The department was more interested in getting its money back [than sanctioning agencies] … it’s very politically-driven,” the former investigator said.

The Department of Employment provided figures to Four Corners which showed that millions of dollars are routinely recouped from agencies, as a result of audits, self-identification by agencies and other “program assurance activities”.

In 2011–2012, $8.34 million was recovered.

The figure spiked to $23.81 million the following year after the inquiry into one particular type of fee.

And last year, another $9.12 million was reclaimed.

A department spokesman said typical repayments by agencies amounted to “less than 1 per cent of the amount paid each year”, and said it had “robust systems” to detect inappropriate claims for fees.

He would not answer a series of specific questions about past or current investigations conducted by the department.

“In cases of suspected fraud, matters are referred to agencies such as the Australian Federal Police and Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions,” the spokesman said.

“Since 2006 the Department has made 38 referrals to the appropriate authorities.”

Do you know more? Email besser.linton@abc.net.au