Youth Jobs PaTH, launched in 2017, is designed to provide a pathway to work by giving young people employability skills, creating opportunities for work experience through internships and supporting employment opportunities with the Youth Bonus Wage Subsidy. This evaluation assesses the appropriateness and effectiveness of the PaTH program. It employed a mixed-methods approach using administrative records, income support tracking via the Research and Evaluation Dataset (RED), longitudinal survey data and qualitative fieldwork involving interviews and focus groups with young people, host businesses, jobactive, Transition to Work and Disability Employment Services providers.

Over the evaluation period, over 37,000 young people engaged with at least one element of the program. The evaluation found some program successes, for example the Youth Bonus Wage Subsidy successfully placed nearly 20,000 young people into ongoing jobs across nearly 12,000 businesses, with around half moving completely off income support within three months.

Other elements of the program faced challenges, for example, sourcing internships proved difficult for providers due to rigorous work health and safety risk assessment frameworks. Deadweight and substitution effects were prominent, with 30% of surveyed host employers reporting they would have hired the participant regardless of the internship.

The evaluation makes the following recommendations:
- Operational guidelines should ensure seamless, ongoing communication and information delivery across decentralised jobactive and training provider networks to prevent course cancellations and scheduling inefficiencies.
- Sourcing protocols must continue to utilise specialised internal internship coordinators and departmental Employer Liaison Officers to build large-scale pipelines with corporate networks.
- Administrative workflows, particularly surrounding complex multi-site work health and safety risk assessments, need clear, standardised definitions of 'competent persons' to mitigate processing bottlenecks.
- Wage subsidy workflows should maintain highly streamlined electronic tracking tools and clear instructions to lower the processing burden for small businesses.