The Australian Government’s 2023 White Paper on Jobs and Opportunities – A Missed Chance to Tackle Ageism?
September saw the release of a major Government initiative to address our nation’s growing social inequality with a focus paper on the creation of sustainable work for everyone who in the future wants a job. With laudable ambition, the Government says it is committed to the establishment of a dynamic and inclusive labour market in which Australians have the opportunity for secure, well-paid jobs in a country where workers, employers and communities can thrive and adapt. In terms of EncourAGEEQUALITY, we are committed to supporting the Government in its desire to achieve a sustainable and inclusive full employment outcome through its identified goal of overcoming barriers to employment and broadening the opportunity to work.
The White Paper describes how our economy and labour market will be shaped by five forces in the coming decades. These forces are population ageing, a rising demand for quality care and support services, the expanded use of digital and advanced technologies, addressing climate change and transforming to a net zero world and finally adapting to an environment of increased geopolitical risk and fragmentation. These forces are changing the composition of our industries, workforce needs, and the nature of work itself. The Government identifies inclusive full employment as the broadening of work opportunities through lowering barriers to work including discrimination and reducing structural underutilisation over time. At the time of the Paper’s release, the Government estimated around 3 million people wanting to work but unable to access paid employment.
The Government recognises that achieving their ambitious reform requires the identification of modern strategies rather than relying on tried-and-true methods that may have worked in the past. An openness to new thinking and willingness to reframe existing structural barriers to increasing employment opportunities for more Australians is to be applauded. Yet, while throughout the Report there is encouraging evidence of this commitment to innovative thinking in creating an inclusive full-employment labour market, unfortunately such innovative thinking is missing when issues of age are touched on. The White Paper largely reflects current thinking on what it means to become older in our society. Ageing is understood as a negative experience and older people as increasingly a burden on society. The existence of ageism in both social and work settings is presented as a less pressing issue than other forms of discrimination.
The Paper correctly identifies a major shaping force of our future economy will be an ageing population enjoying longer and healthier lives. Yet, in reflecting the traditional negative view of ageing as a process of decline and increasing worthlessness, the implications of this trend the Paper states will be less workers to support more older people (known in economic terms as the dependency ratio) and a major increase in demand for aged care support services. The unstated inference is that an older world will present as an increasing economic burden for the community. While this statement of more older than younger people might be true in a longer view of time, the actual influence of ageing on the economy is far more complex and nuanced than the simple statement presented in this White Paper.
Relying on the age dependency ratio as a basis for serious public policy is highly questionable. This ratio characterises all the population 65 years of age and above as being dependent on younger adults and not productive members of society. Shallow assumptions about the behaviour of people in the working age and older age groups and a very narrow view of the meaning of economic activity (which excludes the economic impact of volunteering) render this measure as potentially misleading and fraught with interpretive shortfalls. (1).
The Paper’s perspective on the potential meaning of an older world is ancient not new age thinking. New thinking in this space would see this Paper advocating the need to revise our attitudes to the ageing process. The existing position on the influence of age on the economy represents a missed opportunity to reframe ageing as a valuable contributor to economic development and older people as a benefit to the workforce. The concentration of wealth amongst older Australians is ignored as a potential source of economic demand for new goods and services and future driver of employment opportunity. Analysis currently reveals those over sixty represent more than a quarter of the population, hold forty-six percent of our disposable income, fifty percent of our private wealth and outspend millennials in entertainment, auto, health, travel and almost every other category (2). Research exploring GDP data between 1990 and 2015 found no correlation between ageing demographics and slowed economic growth, providing evidence that ageing societies are economically no worse off with South Korea, Japan and Germany all actually seen to be doing well despite their rapidly ageing populations (3).
The White Paper misses the emergence of a potentially new life stage (possibly because the marketing industry hasn’t twigged to the change underway and come up with a catchy new descriptor to catch this cohort! Think how embedded the term ‘teenager’ is now in our life stage thinking, although marketers only developed the term in the 1950s to reflect the behavioural gap between being a child and a young adult). What we are seeing is the emergence of a ‘middle-plus’ group of people who are around middle age, but with their age extending past traditional retirement age (4), roughly between 50 and 74, recognising however age is only a guideline. This emerging group is economically active or wishes to become more so, aspirational, engaged in some type of work and full of life. Their experience and wisdom represents as a special and valuable human capital resource. This group is not waiting to die or wishing to be dependent on others. This group still wants to make a difference and continue to contribute to society. Regrettably, the White Paper fails to understand the opportunity this new life stage group offers the economy and is weaker in its analysis of future job creation as a result.
Examples of innovative thinking to address this major oversight in the Paper could include:
Creating a Cabinet Minister position for Longevity. We need to move beyond thinking of policy applying to older people in Australia as solely focusing on aged care provision. In light of our ageing population and the need to increase our national productivity there is a compelling case to create a Cabinet role focused on longevity with the purpose of addressing the economic dimensions of living longer, increasing labour force participation of older Australians, tackling employment discrimination and positioning ageing as a positive contributor to society.
Developing, implementing and monitoring a national workforce strategy which has a prime objective of lifting the workforce participation of older Australians. This will require the Government to work with key stakeholders and business to create accountabilities and deliver positive outcomes.
Another major lost opportunity in the White Paper is the reluctance to tackle ageism. The White Paper recognises employment discrimination as a significant barrier to employment opportunity and creation of inclusive workforces. Eliminating discrimination for all people experiencing social or employment disadvantage is a worthy goal and needs addressing at the macro-level. Yet, based on their consultations at the 2022 Job Summit, the Government has determined improving the quality of support for people with disability and First Nations people as well as promoting gender equality are their discrimination priorities. This is great in as far as it goes, but why not also prioritise ageism, particularly as our world moves to an older demographic?
This is not to say the White Paper ignores the existence of ageism in the labour market. The challenges older people finding a job after becoming unemployed is acknowledged. These difficulties are apparent in the increasing proportion of JobSeeker Payment recipients aged over 55. In May 2023, this cohort made up 29 per cent of all people receiving JobSeeker Payment, an 11 per cent increase since September 2013. Employment discrimination is recognised in the statement one in three human resources professionals report they will not hire someone aged over 50.
There may be some relativity in the Government’s discrimination priorities. The Paper notes older workers generally have good labour market outcomes with an employment rate for people aged 55 to 64 years of 67.1 per cent in July 2023, which is above the OECD average of 63.8 per cent. The suggestion is relative to other groups older Australians might still be able to more easily secure paid work thanks to a combination of improved health and greater availability of less physically demanding jobs. Again, there is a suggestion that 65 years still represents the age when most people might choose to retire. This again represents ancient thinking which ignores the desire of many older people to keep working beyond the ‘traditional’ retirement age. What the Paper does not mention is our labour participation rate for those over 65 years is nothing to get excited about and trails the total OECD. The low participation rate of this age group disguises the bigger issue that many of them have just given up looking for work. Ageism is very much alive in our business environment.
While the observation has been made that older workers are to the first half of the 21st-century that women were to last half of the 20th century (5), the Government discrimination priorities do not reflect the magnitude of the ageism problem and the need for its urgent tackling. The response is reflective of diversity research revealing institutions behaving in a reactive manner to external social and power influences where the risk of either personal or organisation reputational damage dictates compliance against community expectations (6). Within this context, as the ageism issue is yet to attract comparable media or political attention to gender equality, First Nations people disadvantage or people with disability employment challenges then the ageism problem is largely ignored. Sadly, from a realpolitik perspective there are just not enough votes from a Government perspective in helping older workers overcome the ageism employment barrier.
What is to be celebrated is the recognition in the Paper of the importance of improved and transparent data collection to better understand workplace diversity issues. The Government is to be commended for emphasising the criticality of data in implementing positive workplace change. As a start, we would suggest existing legislation can be modified to better expose broader existing workplace discrimination employment barriers. Our suggestion is adding a mandatory annual reporting of workplace age diversity profiles. We advocate the Government update the existing EEO legislative provisions to extend the annual requirements of company reporting on gender equality management to also cover the age composition of their existing permanent workforces at all work levels.
The Governments White Paper on Jobs and Opportunities is a welcome contribution to the debate on improving sustainable employment and improved job opportunities for all Australians who want to work. The focus is on innovative thinking to drive productivity, tackle discrimination and create a full employment economy. The Paper recognises the importance of establishing macro-settings that will positively influence business behaviour by making them more accountable for their employment policies and practices. We encourage the Government to see this Paper as a starting point and not a destination by embracing the opportunity an ageing population represents to the economy and older workers to the labour force. Ageism is a first amongst equals discrimination problem and requires the Government to tackle its existence with the same fervour as gender, disability and ethnicity employment challenges. Ageism represents a shared social problem requiring collective action. This Paper is a valuable springboard to creating a truly inclusive labour force where difference is harnessed as a strength and every Australian can rejoice in their ability to make an ongoing contribution to the wellbeing of the nation.
References
(1) Butler, M. (2015). Advanced Australia: The Politics of Ageing. Melbourne University Press. Australia.
(2) The Boomer Guide 2021-22 edition.
https://startsat60.com/starts-at-60-boomer-guide-2021-22
(3) Rotman, D. (2019). Why you shouldn’t fear the gray tsunami. MIT Technology Review (Aug 21)
(4) Schurman, B. (2022). The Super Age. Decoding Our Demographic Destiny. Harper Business.
(5) Farrell, C. (2014). Unretirement. Bloomsbury Press
(6) Kramar, R. (2012). Diversity management in Australia: a mosaic of concepts, practice and rhetoric. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 50, 245-261.
Riach, K. (2009). Managing "difference": understanding age diversity in practice. Human Resource Management Journal, 19(3), 319-335.
