Continuing government inaction on the aged care workforce — including while we wait for the new Labor government to settle in — is exacerbating an already disastrous shortage of workers that is compromising care standards.
A new analysis by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) shows that workforce problems in the sector have significantly worsened in less than a year since it last examined how many workers the sector will need to offset high rates of attrition. CEDA now projects it will face a shortfall of 35,000 workers a year just to maintain current, inadequate standards. It finds nearly 40% of workers in the sector plan to leave in the next five years.
This is significantly up from a shortfall of 17,000 workers a year CEDA found less than 12 months ago in a previous analysis. The report is reinforced by a recent University of Technology Sydney report on the sector, which found that worker shortages had led to a slowing of growth in care time for residential care, and an actual fall in care time for home care recipients:
Slow growth of total direct care staffing rates in residential care, increasing by only 1.9% over the year before to an average of 178.0 minutes per resident per day, well below the sector average minimum standards of 200 minutes that will be mandatory by October 2023 [and] a 1.6% annual decline in the direct care staffing in home care, to 3.80 hours per client per week, equivalent to 32.6 minutes per day.
The high rates of attrition CEDA warns about are being reflected in current workforce figures. Quarterly industry workforce data for the May quarter released last Thursday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that the residential care workforce — which covers both the residential aged care and (much smaller) residential disability care workforces, but not home care workers — fell to 250,000 in the May quarter (so much for Scott Morrison’s $800 “bonus” for workers).
While quarterly figures are subject to volatility, in the year to May the workforce averaged 250,000. That’s up from the year to May 2021, covering the height of the pandemic when it averaged 240,000, but still well down on the comparable period to 2020 when the workforce was more than 260,000, and 2019 (257,000). The residential workforce may not reach pre-pandemic levels until 2023 — or perhaps 2024, given the tightness of the labour market.
In most industries, allowing the entry of large numbers of migrant workers would push wages down, but so bad is the workforce situation for aged care — it matches the “worst-case scenarios” previously identified by CEDA — that it needs both significantly higher migration and much higher wages. CEDA is particularly critical of the absence of personal care work from the skilled migration visa category, and also recommends foreign students be allowed to work longer hours in the sector.
What’s frustrating is that the above torrent of numbers — of actual workforce, of projections, of surveys of worker intentions — is simply confirming what we’ve known for years about the growing challenge of the aged care workforce. The previous government did nothing beyond throwing money at home care, little of which appears to have incentivised workers to enter that subsector, and presided over the lonely deaths of thousands of seniors as a result of COVID and neglect in aged care facilities — something that, if there were any justice, would see former ministers from Morrison down in the dock having to defend themselves.
But the new government has to move quickly to do more than commit to fund the work value case outcome from the Fair Work Commission (FWC), which is months off at best. By the time the FWC has made up its mind and the government has allocated the funding in the 2023 budget process, the shortfall of workers will have grown still further, and the chances of facilities being able to meet the legislated requirements for a 24/7 nurse and 200 minutes of care will be even slimmer.
How many reports, reviews, analyses, examinations, inquiries and studies do we need before feet-dragging politicians do the right thing by seniors? And how many of the latter will die of neglect, malnourishment and poor quality care before standards are raised?
