Employment services in Australia

Australia’s employment services system plays a powerful role in shaping people’s access to economic opportunity, yet for many women, particularly those facing structural or compounding disadvantage, interactions with Workforce Australia highlight a system that often reinforces rather than reduces inequality. 

By examining the design and performance of Australia’s employment services system, this brief identifies significant structural and accountability gaps that prevent the system from supporting job seekers into meaningful and sustainable employment. The paper outlines how current compliance-driven models and weak performance measures undermine workforce participation. 

The paper invites policymakers to rethink what success looks like by reimagining employment services as a mechanism for empowerment – shifting from short-term outcomes to sustained, gender-responsive pathways into decent work. In considering how trauma-informed practices could build a fairer and more effective model of support, the brief outlines five key reform areas: 

1. strengthening funding and support for women-focused services
2. building a gender-responsive and skilled employment services workforce
3. making employment requirements fair, flexible and relevant
4. recognising lived experience and transferable skills
5. designing services around lived experience and local community knowledge.