Most Australians need a decent income to lead healthy, stress-free lives — but new job availability data shows unemployment is still a major issue for hundreds of thousands of Australians.

Social advocacy organisation Anglicare Australia argues the Reserve Bank of Australia’s stance that the labour market remains tight fails to consider those being left behind and the widening gap.

“Hidden behind the talk of a high employment rate, a clear problem continues to exist when it comes to people who are facing barriers to work,” The Jobs Availability Snapshot report published this month said.

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The report looks at JobSeeker data from across Australia and compares the number of people who have been looking for work for at least a year with the number of suitable job advertisements throughout August 2024.

It called the “dire results” evidence of “a crisis that can no longer be ignored”.

The issue is not equal across Australia — in some locations it is almost twice as bad as the national average.

Australia-wide, on average, there were 33 JobSeekers to every suitable entry-level job advertised in August.

That’s a Skill Level 5 job — not the type of entry-level job that exists within higher-skilled occupations — and Job Skills Australia describes it as requiring a secondary education or a Certificate I, or a short period of on-the-job training.

Of those 33 JobSeekers nationally, 21 have barriers to accessing entry-level jobs.

Job availability ranked state-by-state

In Northern Territory, the ratio of suitable jobs to Jobseekers is as bad as it gets in Australia. There are 65 JobSeekers to every suitable job advertisement in the territory. That has improved by just one point since 2023.

Tasmania had the second-worst result, with 50 JobSeekers to every suitable job ad — seven more than this time last year in the island state.

In South Australia, demand for entry-level jobs is the third highest in the nation, with 43 JobSeekers for every suitable job, up two points since 2023.

In Victoria there are 35 JobSeekers for each job ad, and in NSW there are 34.

Only Western Australia, Queensland and the ACT beat the national average, with 32, 29 and 17 Jobseekers respectively competing for a single suitable job ad on average.

It is the highest level of competition captured by a Snapshot report since the pandemic.

“This year’s Snapshot reveals that competition for entry-level jobs is strong. So strong that people with barriers to work outnumber entry-level vacancies by 21 to one, and there are 33 people out of work for each entry-level role,” it said.

“These results challenge the popular belief that the inability to find a job is an individual failure. Instead, the Snapshot reveals a deeper structural problem.

“There is a fundamental mismatch between the skills of those looking for work and the opportunities that are available.”

‘An illusion of progress’

While the number of JobSeekers looking for work for an extended period of time has actually decreased in the past year, the deepdive by Anglicare shows those figures “do not tell the full story”.

An eligibility expansion made to the Parenting Payment Single legislated in September 2023 ultimately worked to transition a cohort of single parents from the JobSeeker Payment to the parenting payment which give recipients an additional $176.90 per fortnight.

The caseload for that parenting payment historically sat at about 220,000, it had surged to 323,400 by August 2024. The number of female Jobseekers fell by 13 per cent within the same period, the Anglicare report said.

“In contrast, no similar decrease in JobSeeker recipients was observed among men, which reflects broader societal trends where women disproportionately shoulder caregiving responsibilities,” it said.

And while there was, conversely, a transition of Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipients to the JobSeeker payment — following a tightening of DSP eligibility criteria in the last decade — those JobSeekers face barriers to employment such as physical, intellectual or psychiatric impairment.

“The proportion of JobSeeker recipients with a partial capacity to work rose by 18 per cent over the past decade,” the report said.

The Age Pension qualifying age was also increased, and this ageing cohort making up 6.6 per cent of the JobSeeker pool also face barriers to employment because of their age.

The barriers and the solutions

While certain barriers to employment are ignored, unemployment of the nation’s most vulnerable is failing to be addressed, the report asserts.

Government-subsidised TAFE courses and vocational training goes some way to closing this gap, but it still leaves out the most basic barriers.

“They should focus on removing immediate barriers, such as financial support to complete a police check, a working with children or vulnerable people check, first aid, or support to obtain a driver’s licence, rather than the more nebulous training options currently on offer,” the report said.

It even defined the “mutual obligations” required by JobSeekers as a barrier in of itself.

“In some cases, mutual obligations have made people less employable, as the focus on compliance undermines people’s intrinsic motivation to seek work, replacing it with a frustrating cycle of busywork,” the report said.

It cited a 2022 study on the impact of mutual obligations on 6,253 unemployed people, which showed people who were not subjected to mutual obligations found work more quickly.

“We need to build a system that actually helps people find the work they want. This must be done alongside investment in direct job creation to address the root cause of the problem — that is, a dearth of entry-level jobs,” the report said.

“Every step must be taken to ensure the very system that is meant to support people in times of need doesn’t itself become a barrier to work.”