Unlocking opportunities for families across Australia

As a boutique executive search firm, we’ve seen up close the impact of Australia’s labour shortage as the pool of candidates continues to shrink, limiting the growth of careers and businesses – and hampering national productivity.

With some 425,000 job vacancies across Australia, no wonder the OECD recommended that Australia focus on productivity to help speed up the country’s post-COVID recovery.

So, as the dust settles over the election result, we’re looking forward to seeing Prime Minister Albanese fulfil his vow to make “full and equal opportunity for women a national economic and social priority”.

Sam Mostyn, president of Chief Executive Women, said Australia could not afford to lag when it came to women’s participation in the workforce.

“We are facing record job vacancies and growing skills shortages. Yet, we have a ready workforce, which is highly educated and skilled, that is sidelined by powerful barriers to their participation,” she said in a statement.

Among the businesses we work with at Salt & Shein, corporate communications and PR agencies, who traditionally employ many women, have been hit especially hard by the skills shortage. 

“Anything we can do to encourage women to stay in the industry is certainly beneficial,” said Tabitha Fairbairn, managing director of Mango Communications Sydney.

Unreasonable tax

The impact of the Labor Government’s additional $5.4 billion in childcare subsidies will flow to household budgets across the country as it helps stimulate national productivity levels and reduces a major disincentive to returning to the labour force or going from part-time to full-time work.

Importantly, improved benefits and the move towards universal childcare will make it financially feasible for women to work at levels that match their education and experience – helping solve for a problem that has been costing Australia for far too long.

One of our senior consultants, Lucinda Attrill, specialises in finding quality candidates for public relations consultancies, an area which has been grappling with a massive skills shortage.

“Given that a vast number of the candidates I work with are senior-level females, better childcare benefits mean these women can head back into the workforce and take roles that match their level of expertise,” Attrill said.

An article in The Conversation said the current cost of childcare effectively imposes an unreasonable tax on a second earner wanting to work four days (67%) or five days (70%) a week – made up of roughly half income tax and half childcare costs.

“The 67% and 70% effective marginal tax rates are severe, and beyond what we would normally consider to be a reasonable take from a day’s pay packet,” the authors, of RMIT, Monash and the University of Melbourne, wrote.

Flow-on effects

The federal election was a clear mandate for change, according to Robyn Sefiani, CEO and founder of communications firm Sefiani.

“By giving women the choice to go back to work, and making that choice affordable, we can unlock opportunities across Australia’s economy,” she said. “This is particularly urgent in our profession, where there is such a high demand for our expertise.”

Sefiani sees significant flow-on effects from improved access to childcare:

• Incentives for women to rejoin the job market at levels that meet their qualifications, rather than remaining in part-time work which is often poorly paid and below their skill and education levels
• More opportunities for women to follow pathways to leadership roles
• Recognition of the value women bring to the Australian workforce when they have been short-changed for so long
• Improved opportunity for equity across workforces.

More to do

We look forward to seeing the benefits of improved productivity flow across the social and economic fabric of our great country. However, just as productivity is an across-the-board economic issue, so childcare reaches beyond women and across households.

“Women are typically the ones who stay home and look after the kids, and there are a number of reasons for that,” Mango Communications’ Fairbairn said.

“Lower childcare costs will certainly help – but this needs to be an issue for families rather than for women, alone. We need to have the right conversations at the right levels to change that perception,” she said.

We asked Attrill whether the improved childcare benefits would help solve the skills shortage.

“I hope it’s enough of a catalyst over the next six to 12 months to attract this tranche of women back into the workforce in earnest,” she said.

Next stop, the gender pay gap.