Youth Unemployment in Australia: Discussion and Recommendations

This report discusses the issues related to unemployment in young generation in Australia and provides recommendations for youth employment program. It also analyzes the steps taken by the government to improve the unemployment issue in youth.

Social Policy

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Youth Unemployment in Australia: Discussion and Recommendations
Audience
This report is prepared considering the Australian Government and authorities as a target
audience. The government bodies which are responsible for taking care of youth employment
in Australia will get recommendations for youth employment program at the end of the report
as the report will discuss the issues related to unemployment in young generation in
Australia. To reduce the unemployment what are the steps taken by the government and at
what extent it can be successful; this is the problem that is discussed in this paper.
Summary of the Problem
Unemployment is a situation of looking for employment but not being currently employed.
There are many reasons of unemployment such as poverty, high tax rate, high wage rate and
many others. These factors discourage the companies for hiring the workers. There are two
problems which results the unemployment and those are lack of resources and poverty.
Unemployment is an important issue which are faced by the Australian economist and the
government leaders. Homelessness and hunger are considered as the social problem of the
economy. Unemployment is also a social issue which is face by the countries which have lack
of resources and poverty (Argy, and Nevile, 2016). Capitalism and liberalism are the two
important factors of economics which affect the employment conditions in the country. How
these factors are affecting the employment conditions in Australia? This is the questions
addressed in the report. The Australian government is taking many steps in order to improve
the unemployment issue in youth. How effective are they? This is also discussed in the paper
and based on the analysis some recommendations are provided.

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Background
“Youth Job Path” policy is a step which is taken by the Australian government to remove
unemployment from the country. 5.6 per cent is the current unemployment rate in Australia.
To reduce this percentage of unemployment; the government took the initiative by applying
the policy of Youth Job Path. The main aim of the policy is; creating the new path to the
youth employment (Saunders, Wong, and Bradbury, 2016). This policy of Australian
government helps the young people of Australia through Australia’s economic transition.
More than 50,000 youth jobs were created over the past 18 months to increase the
employment rate of the economy. The situation of young people is getting worse just because
of rising unemployment rate in the economy. In the 2014, the unemployment rate of young
people was 14.5% which is now decreasing and reached to 12.0% in 2016 (Brigitte, Gabriel,
and Elisabeta, 2018). However if we look at the data from last decade, it is found that
unemployment has enhanced and there is a lot to improve.
(Source: Parliament of Australia, 2017)
Youth Job Path policy helps the young people by supporting them through employment. The
government of Australia takes many steps to remove unemployment from the country. There
are two youth employment programs organised by the government such as Hand Out and

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Hand In. Hand Out will increase the participation rate of people and decreases the cost of
employing young people. This policy helps the companies; those who have the low wages
rate and it also offer the subsidies to those firms to offset employment costs. The main
purpose of these policies is all about getting the people back into the work. After the
initiative, it has been seen that the unemployment rate has been shifted with the less number
of percentage. 20% of Australian youth are getting the job in a year and again this is trending
upwards (Quirk, 2015). The government of Australia helped 120,000 young people over the
four years by providing them job opportunity as the economy diversifies and transition to
broader based growth.
It can be said that $752 million-Youth Job Path programme will help the young job seekers in
getting the job. This policy of Australian government has the three paths which help the
people by providing those jobs and internships. The first path is employability skills training
which helps the young job seeker to participate in the pre-employment skills training
programs for five months. The second path of the government is to provide up to 120,000
internship placements to help the young people who want to gain the experience. The third
path of government is youth bonus wages subsidy which describes that the Australian
employers will be eligible for Youth Bonus Wage Subsidy from the government.
Unemployment in Australia is reduced by increasing rate of growth in the number of jobs
created. Liberalism in Australia protects the young people from unemployment; it has been
noted that the labour unemployment is reduced under the Liberals. The Australian young
people have the benefits of employment because the nature of Australian economy is liberal
(Mavromaras, Sloane, and Wei, 2015).

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Discussion
The country is still facing the issue of unemployment due to different types of attitude
towards the payments. In each area there is a different criterion of payment which affects the
unemployment of the country. Australian has the negative attitude towards the extra benefits
and extra wages. The country also provides the insurance benefit but the Australian
organisations do not provide the extra benefits to the employees. The different types of
payments cause the issue of unemployment in the country. The reason of rising
unemployment in the country is that Youth Job Path did not provide the education to those
people who live below the poverty line. It offers the internship to the employees who /have
the knowledge but wants the experience. The government has the responsibility to create the
right policy frameworks that will facilitate stronger jobs growth and will give the
opportunities to Australians (Correa‐Velez, Barnett, and Gifford, 2015).
Recommendations
Although the steps taken by the Australian government is right but still the country face the
issue of unemployment. The responsibility of the government has to take the further steps to
implement this policy strongly so that the young people get the job.
Enhance incentives
The government should make the incentive plan to provide the extra incentive to the
employees so that, more and more young people participate in the internships programs and
encourage themselves to earn the money (Carvalho, 2015).
Capitalism
Capitalism also plays an important role in creating new jobs. The government of the country
provides 60% shares to the private companies so that the companies provide more

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opportunities to the employees for the high growth of the companies as well as country. This
step increases the employment rate in the country (Lombardi, and Coley, 2017).
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it has been concluded that Australian government took the step
towards this issues by applying the policy of Youth Job Path. The Australian government
applied the Youth Job Path policy to reduce the unemployment rate in the country. By
applying this policy, the employment rate has increased and unemployment rate is decreased
among the youth. Although, the policy achieved its objective but due to different types of
payments and other reasons the unemployment is still an issue in the country. The
government should take the step such as enhancing the incentives so that the young people
get the job.

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References
Argy, V.E. and Nevile, J., 2016. Inflation and Unemployment: Theory, Experience and Policy
Making. Routledge.
Brigitte, S.C., Gabriel, D. and Elisabeta, J., 2018. Evaluation of the Duration of
Unemployment Spells Using Kaplan-Meier Estimator. A study on Botoşani County’s Labor
Market. Ovidius University Annals&58; Economic Sciences Series, 18(1), pp.248-253.
Carvalho, P., 2015. Youth unemployment in Australia. Policy: A Journal of Public Policy
and Ideas, 31(4), p.36.
Correa‐Velez, I., Barnett, A.G. and Gifford, S., 2015. Working for a better life: Longitudinal
evidence on the predictors of employment among recently arrived refugee migrant men living
in Australia. International Migration, 53(2), pp.321-337.
Lombardi, C.M. and Coley, R.L., 2017. Early maternal employment and children's academic
and behavioral skills in Australia and the United Kingdom. Child development, 88(1),
pp.263-281.
Mavromaras, K., Sloane, P. and Wei, Z., 2015. The scarring effects of unemployment, low
pay and skills under-utilization in Australia compared. Applied economics, 47(23), pp.2413-
2429.
Parliament of Australia. 2017. [online] Available from:
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/
Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201617/Youthemployment [Accessed
4/11/18].
Quirk, V., 2015. Restore full employment in Australia to shift the balance of power back
towards working people. Australian Socialist, 21(1), p.3.

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Saunders, P., Wong, M. and Bradbury, B., 2016. Poverty in Australia since the financial
crisis: the role of housing costs, income growth and unemployment. Journal of Poverty and
Social Justice, 24(2), pp.97-112.