Is your company offering enough entry-level jobs?

Up to five young people are now competing for every entry-level job advertised across Australia

Is your company offering enough entry-level jobs?
Think the youth today are benefiting from the employment boom? Think again.

A new report has found up to five young people are now competing for every entry-level job advertised across Australia.

Anglicare Australia’s Jobs Availability Snapshot report looked at what the job market is really like for those facing the greatest barriers to work.

For example, these include people who may not have qualifications or experience to draw on, those trying to re-enter the workforce after a long break, or those living in regional or remote areas.

In particular, Anglicare examined jobs advertised and unemployment figures from May 2017, and found there were 124,000 jobseekers who were only qualified for entry-level jobs.

The report found that those jobseekers were competing for 25,979 entry-level jobs advertised.

Moreover, the number of entry-level jobs was also falling. In 2006, about 22% of advertised jobs were entry-level. This year, it was 15%.

Steve Shepherd, CEO at TwoPointZero, previously told HRD there are a number of reasons why the youth are struggling to get jobs today.

For one, Shepherd thinks that over the last 20 or so years there has been a shift away from the culture where many organisations offer traineeships, apprenticeships, cadetships and those sorts of things.

“They have become part of the cost-cutting exercises and I think as corporations we need to consider how we reinvest in youth to continue to develop the workforce of the future,” said Shepherd.

He added that instead of helping young Australians understand their passions, interests and strengths to point them on the right path, we just tell them to go to university and get a degree in whatever subject they take a fancy to, with little or no thought about whether that leads them down the right vocational path.

“To address Australia’s mounting youth employment issues, we need to fix our education system and the guidance we provide young people from high school through to university,” he said.

“We need to educate students of the skills gaps in the workforce and help encourage those with the right passions into those roles. And, we need to better align education with the skills required in the workforce today.”


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