Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) system shows growing signs of erosion, fragmentation and dysfunction, according to new research from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

The research reveals a grim picture of a VET system starved of consistent funding or focus, fragmenting into scattered offerings of non-accredited and ‘micro-credential’ courses, mostly provided by private for-profit training companies. Furthermore, several high-profile government announcements during the pandemic designed to address skilled labour shortages have not altered the VET system’s worrying trajectory.

Key findings:

• The report recommends a stronger focus on a more pro-active, hands-on approach to workforce training and planning.
• A new approach to training would support training in comprehensive, quality, accredited qualifications, rather than short-term fragments of training, with revitalised TAFE institutes leading the nation’s skills reconstruction process.
• The report proposes that a minimum 70% of public VET funding be reallocated through the TAFE system.
• New supports announced during COVID boosted government VET funding by $1.6 billion in 2019-20 from its five-year low. However deep and long-standing problems with Australia’s VET system have not been resolved – and in some cases, worsened.
• All VET enrolment growth between 2015-20 has been in non-accredited training, growing by almost 70,000 enrolments, while properly regulated, accredited program enrolments have plunged by over 500,000.
• Apprenticeship numbers showed a partial rebound in 2020-21 after eight years of marked decline – but Australia still has 173,000 fewer apprentices and trainees in training than it had in 2012, one-third below 2012 levels.
• Empirical evidence shows rising apprenticeships ‘on the books’ are not being matched by any rise in completions. The number of apprenticeship and traineeship completions collapsed to a new low in the year ending June 2021, with just 77,000 completions – down almost two-thirds from 2013.
• Government wage subsidies are creating strong incentives for employers to recycle heavily subsidised short-term apprentices. No requirements on employers to ensure apprentices finish programs, offer jobs after completion, and lower 5-10% subsidy rates under the government’s companion program Completing Apprenticeships combine to reinforce apprentice ‘churn’.
• Three key feminised sectors facing huge shortages of qualified labour (nursing, education, and welfare programs) have all seen continued decline in numbers of apprentices.
• Three in five (60%) new apprentices in-training over the year to June 2021 were men.
• In 2021, the proportion of government-subsidised students studying with TAFE fell to less than half of all government-funded VET students (49%) – an historic low. 33% were attending for-profit private providers.
• TAFE staffing and funding have also eroded further, as federal VET subsidies are diverted in favour of private for-profit providers. Failed market-based policies and TAFE defunding has seen over 8,800 full-time equivalent TAFE positions cut since 2012 across five states and territories.
• Without renewed investment in TAFE programs, the significant annual economic benefits generated by the stock of TAFE-trained skilled workers in the labour force estimated at $92.5 billion per year will decay

“Continued decline in enrolments and eight years of declining apprenticeship completions make it very clear: Australia’s domestic skills pipeline is in disarray,” said Alison Pennington, senior economist at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

“Deep failures in VET policy reflect broader failures of Australian economic policy to encourage far-sighted investments of any kind in the economy: physical capital, innovation, or skills.

“Government COVID-era skills policies throw money at employers taking on apprentices and trainees, but have failed to fix the training system. There is no evidence the skills pipeline has been either protected or replenished under current VET policies.

“Feminised industries with the most pressing labour shortages continue to see weak participation in accredited programs, traineeships, and apprenticeships. 3 in 5 of the additional apprentices and trainees in training over the year to June 2021 were men.

“Once again, women’s jobs and demands have been deprioritised in favour of the optics of high-vis photo-ops.

“Australia must commit to rebuilding the TAFE system’s leading role in reliable vocational education – the national skills policy infrastructure that can restore Australia’s long-term investment vision in its people, skills, and innovative sustainable industries.”

The number of hours stolen from Australians by employers has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the average employee now providing eight full-time weeks of free work per year.

17 November 2021 marks Go Home on Time Day, run by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, and now in its thirteenth year.

Key findings from this year’s Go Home on Time Day report:

• The average employed Australian is performing 6.13 hours of unpaid work each week in 2021, up from 5.25 in 2020, and 4.62 in 2019.
• That time theft equates to 319 hours per year, or over eight standard 38-hour work weeks per worker.
• This unpaid overtime represents the loss of $125 billion in income from Australian workers in the past year, or $461.60 per worker every fortnight.
• COVID-19 appears to have accelerated Australia’s time theft crisis, with 26% of workers reporting their employers’ expectations of their availability increased during the pandemic.
• Amidst the growth in working from home during COVID, employers are using new technologies to pressure and monitor employees. 39% of workers report their employers are remotely monitoring them through technology like webcams and keystroke counters.
• Young workers aged 18-29 performed the most unpaid overtime (8.17 hours per week)

“This year Australian workers are taking home a smaller share of GDP than we have ever seen before. Yet, time-theft is rife and bosses are stealing record amounts of unpaid time from workers,” said Dan Nahum, economist at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.
 
“Arriving at work early, staying late, working through breaks, working nights and weekends, taking calls or emails out of hours – there are a host of ways employers steal time from their employees, and we see them all being used prodigiously.

“COVID-19 has made the situation worse, indicating work-from-home does not necessarily improve work life in favour of employees. Instead we’re seeing further incursion of work into people’s personal time and their privacy. In many cases it’s making it easier for employers to undercut Australian minimum standards around hours, overtime, and penalty rates.

“Alarmingly work-from-home arrangements have been accompanied by innovative surveillance methods, with 39 per cent of employees saying their employers remotely monitor their activity and a further 17 per cent unsure whether they were being electronically monitored or not. When one in three workers say they are being monitored via webcam and 30 per cent say their every keystroke is being recorded, it’s clear our industrial laws are not keeping pace with tech.

“If Australians want to stop this alarming theft of billions of hours of time, and hundreds of billions of dollars of income, policymakers need to strengthen workers’ power to demand reasonable, stable hours of limit, and fair payment for every hour they work. This is all the more important with so many Australians working from their own homes.”

Mr Nahum said it was an injustice that many Australians report being eager for more paid hours while contributing free ones to their boss.

“Half the part-time and casual workers in this country report they are keen for more paid hours, yet the average part-timer is giving away over 4.5 hours a week and the average casual just over 5 hours,” Mr Nahum said.

“These are worker efforts that should end up as wages in someone’s pocket, not a boost to a profit column.”

New research from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work confirms that workers in casual and insecure jobs have borne the lion’s share of job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic – both the first lockdowns in 2020, and the more recent Delta-wave of closures.

Key Findings:

• Since May, workers in casual and part-time jobs have suffered over 70% of job losses from renewed lockdowns and workplace closures.
• Casual workers have been 8 times more likely to lose work than permanent staff. Meanwhile, part-time workers have been 4.5 times more likely to lose work than full-timers.
• The report documents the disproportionate concentration of insecure work among women, young workers, and in the retail and hospitality sectors. Women hold over 53% of all casual jobs, but only 48% of permanent roles.
• Average wages are much lower in insecure jobs. Casual workers, on average, earn 26% less per hour and 52% less per week than permanent workers – contrary to the common assumption that casual workers receive higher wages to offset their lack of entitlements and job protections.
• The research estimates that if casual workers received the same hourly wages as permanent staff, overall wage incomes in Australia would grow by $30 billion per year, or 3.5%. That would mark a welcome change from the past eight consecutive years of record-low wage growth.
• The report also shows that less than half of working Australians now hold a permanent, full-time waged job with entitlements. The traditional norm of a ‘standard’ job has been eroded on all sides by part-time jobs, casual work, temporary and contractor jobs, precarious forms of self-employment, and (more recently) on-demand gig work.

“Workers in insecure jobs have been the shock troops of the pandemic,” said Dr Jim Stanford, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, and report author.

“They suffered by far the deepest casualties during the first round of layoffs. Then they were sent back into battle, as the economy temporarily recovered. But now their livelihoods are being shot down again, in mass numbers.

“It is bad enough that workers in these jobs do not receive basic entitlements like paid sick leave or severance protections. But even when they are working, they are paid far less than other workers.

“The long-term and multi-faceted expansion of insecure work, in all its forms, is ripping apart economic and social stability in Australia.”

“Recent changes in labour law, which confirm the right of employers to use casual labour in any position — even stable long-term roles — will lead to further expansion of insecure work once the pandemic is over. New pathways for workers to convert to permanent status have numerous limitations and exemptions, and will not significantly affect growing job insecurity.”