Without migrant aged care workers, it's doubtful Australia would have the workforce for a sustainable age care system.
That's the conclusion of the Council for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), which found Australia needs at least 400,000 additional workers across residential and in-home aged care by 2050.
Demand for care and carers will continue to grow as the population ages. It is estimated 2.5 million people aged 65-plus will require some form of care by then, up from 1.5 million now.
However, the basis on which migrant workers are here is itself shaky. It is conservatively estimated around 70,000 - or one-in-six - personal care workers are on temporary visas.
In a new report, CEDA concludes Australia's aged care labour agreements are failing to address critical workforce shortages and should be replaced with a new visa program.
According to CEDA, demand for care and carers will grow rapidly as the population ages.
But with housing a big problem in Australia, how can we ensure a migrant workforce has somewhere to live?
More on that later.
The CEDA report, Duty of care: How to fix the aged care worker shortage, found just 2,426 temporary migrants were sponsored under all labour agreements in the sector at the end of June - that's less than 1% of all personal care workers in aged care.
"The Federal Government said it would investigate an essential skills pathway for critical sectors like aged care in its 2023 Migration Strategy, but there has been little progress so far on this front," CEDA chief executive, Melinda Cilento, said.
"The labour agreement approach is not working to fix the shortage and is not a substitute for an essential skills visa pathway."
The report says that while aged care labour agreements are meant to help bring in qualified workers from overseas, 90% of visas under the scheme are going to migrants already in Australia.
Aged care providers are using the agreement to retain existing staff rather than expand the workforce.
The reasons include:
- Protracted negotiations
- Inconsistent processes across states
- High visa costs deterring providers from using the agreements.
Most temporary migrants in the sector currently are on student, partner, or working holiday visas.
Let Pensioners Work
National Seniors Australia (NSA) has consistently told government it can address some of the shortages by incentivising existing aged care workers, many of whom are nearing retirement, to continue to work without penalising them through the Aged Pension income test.
Currently, pensioners who earn more than pension limits lose their pension payments at a rate of 50 cents for every dollar earned. We need to retain older workers throughout the economy, but especially in the care sector, to meet desperate workforce shortages.
Letting pensioners work would also attract retirees to rejoin the aged care workforce.
What we are calling for: Employment income should be exempt from the income test for all pensioners, but could be trialled first in the health and care sectors (aged, disability, child care) where worker shortages are a matter of life and death.
The benefits: This will give older people greater income and retain more people in the workforce to address job vacancies.
Economic modelling: We commissioned Deloitte to conduct modelling into the costs and benefits of exempting work income from the Age Pension income test. It found that the cost to government would be neutral if 8.3% of pensioners worked or worked more.
