Australia Jobs Vacancy: Australia's child care industry 7000 job vacancies in September alone

Australia's childcare industry is right now facing its biggest challenge on record, with more than 7000 job vacancies in September alone. That shocking figure left many in the industry on edge. For more, we're joined by the executive director of Parenthood, Georgie Dent, in Sydney, Georgia. Good morning to you. That's a shocking number. One of the reasons.

Look, it is shocking, Carl, and it is particularly shocking when you think that just over two years ago, in October of 2020, there were just over 3000 vacancies. Now the reason that it has more than doubled since then is that the Pandemic has really highlighted how poorly paid early educators are. They were on the front line of the Pandemic when we were all told to stay at home, to stay safe. Early educators have to keep turning up to work so that everybody else could go and do the work our communities depended upon. So we are seeing educators burnt out and they literally cannot afford to stay in the industry that they love because the wages are so poor.

Well, that's a really valid question, and that's the question that parenthood is very much happy to speak to the government about and happy to speak to anyone about because we need a workforce. So the changes that come into effect for the childcare subsidy on the 1 July next year, it's estimated that we will need at least an additional nine and a half thousand full-time educators to take on the additional demand that we want from families so that families can work the additional day if that's what they want to do. But if we don't fix this workforce, we're not going to have those workers. So families will not be able to access the day even if the care was going to be more affordable. So Parenthood and a number of other organizations at the moment have been asking for an interim wage supplement of some sort. We know that industrial relations are underway and there's going to be a process in which the wages of early educators can be assessed. But we need something right now because any industrial instrument is going to take time. That's the way that process is. It's not going to happen immediately.

We need early educators. We need to send them a signal right now that the work that they do is valuable, that we recognize they haven't been paid adequately and that we need them to stay. And that's why an interim wage supplement would be useful.

Okay, so we're 7000 down. Now you're saying we're going to need nine and a half thousand by July 1 next year. I don't know where you're going to get them from.

Yes, I know it's scary when you think about those numbers. But the good news is that the attrition rate in early education has really jumped in the last two years. So, as I said, in October 2020, there were 3000 vacancies there are now more than 7000. But what we know is that those early educators are still in this country. They are still, most of them, they're still skilled. They've got the qualifications that they need. If we can slow the attrition rate, so if we can get the turnover rate back to what it was pre-pandemic, even if we can reduce the attrition rate by 10%, we would have access to an additional 150 workers, because that would be workers that we're not going to lose. If the current turnover rate continues, we will not have the educators that we need first.

The federal government and just pick up what you're saying. Like I was doing daycare pick up yesterday, they've got within their centers, there's just a couple of them, eight vacancies they're trying to fill. Four people have applied for eight jobs. And they say that the crisis is coming and it's like they're properly stressed. All of a sudden you have all these extra parents going, okay, great, check our kids in next July.