Young people aged 15 – 25 have for decades been the generation most at risk of unemployment and underemployment. The industries this generation are most likely to enter – most notably the retail trades and accommodation and food services – are characterised by precarity, with poor prospects for certified skills training and progression. 

The chances of young people accessing decent work with good prospects are significantly lower for those who have not completed secondary school or are not at university or other higher education. That disadvantage is compounded by the current Australian system of employment services, because mutual obligations policy requires people on income support to look for jobs and take available work or risk losing their income support. Careers information and vocational skills training are not well coordinated, and wage subsidies by themselves are not sufficient incentives for employers to hire inexperienced candidates. 

At the same time, some industry sectors are suffering from serious skills shortages. These sectors have scope to offer entry level jobs backed up by industry-relevant, workplace-based skills training, with pathways to formal qualifications and opportunities to progress, within firms or on to other roles in growing industries. These are not skills shortages that can – or should – be met through skilled migration, when unemployed young people in Australia could be connected and supported into quality employment. This would return broader benefits to the Australian economy while achieving greater social inclusion, diversity in workplaces, and equity of employment outcomes across generations and for those at risk of being left behind.

This paper reports on interviews with executives and managers in the rapidly expanding IT sector, who are struggling to find the talent they need, and recognise the need for a sustained and systematic approach to finding, placing, training and retaining employees. The interviews reveal the need for the IT sector to take fresh approaches to attract that talent, and to design recruitment and education pathways that will support staff to flourish and progress into the skilled jobs that need to be filled. 

The programs described in the interviews reveal a diverse range of formal and informal learning models adopted by firms to support the learning pathways of new recruits. Interviews also illustrate the ways that workplace-based supports can be provided through partnerships with community organisations, to ensure that wrap-around social and educational services maximise each individual’s chances of success. 

The paper compares these promising directions with the nature of existing services and resources in Australia’s current employment services systems. It finds that most IT firms lack the employment support services they need: the in-house capacity to recruit from a more diverse candidate base; to manage government wage subsidies; to aggregate and broker formal qualifications with Registered Training Organisations; and to support employees with the broader social supports they might need.