Workforce Plan 2024
The Workforce Plan 2024 addresses the unique challenges and opportunities each sector faces. It provides a roadmap to address workforce challenges and ensure Australia’s care and support sectors are equipped to meet future demands.
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Overview 2024
The Workforce Plan 2024 addresses the unique challenges and opportunities each sector faces. It provides a roadmap to address workforce challenges and ensure Australia’s care and support sectors are equipped to meet future demands.
Key Findings
Major workforce shortages
Australia’s care and support sectors are growing rapidly, creating significant pressure on the workforce. Our findings highlights persistent labour shortages, driven by population needs (e.g. ageing population, increased care complexity) and sector expansion.
Skills gaps
Training pathways don’t always align with industry needs, leading to gaps in essential skills and knowledge and the need to update qualifications and improve training delivery
Career pathways
To improve attraction, retention and diversity in the workforce, there must be clear, accessible career pathways and increased participation from underrepresented groups.
Explore the sectors
While each of our sectors face many common challenges, they also have unique issues affecting their workforce. We take a close look at the sectors to identify the work that needs doing and the work that has been achieved so far.
Age Care and Disability Services
Aged care and disability services face rapid growth, complex reform, and persistent workforce shortages, particularly in community settings. Improving attraction, retention, skills portability and career pathways is critical to delivering high-quality person-centred care, for these two distinct but interconnected workforces.
1,019,000
Aged Care and Disability Support Workers
818,000
People
30.9%
10 year
188,571
Enrolments
Children's Education and Care
The children’s education and care sector is undergoing significant reform amid workforce shortages. Workload and limited progression pathways challenge attraction and retention, despite growing recognition of the sector’s foundational role in lifelong learning. Our work focuses on building a sustainable, skilled and supported workforce.
728,000
Educators
151,612
Enrolments
19%
Sector growth
24%
Childhood education and care educators
Health
Australia’s healthcare system provides a wide range of services and support; helping Australians maintain their health and wellbeing. Health workforces are under sustained pressure from rising demand, workforce shortages and changing models of care. Our workforce plan highlighted the need to support workers to practise to scope, strengthen training pathways and improve recognition of assistant rol
15%
Increase in demand
25.8%
Project workforce growth
710,000
People employed
79,703
People employed
Human (Community) Services
Human (community) services support people facing complex social challenges. The workforce experiences high stress, insecure funding and limited career pathways. Strengthening skills, wellbeing and professional recognition is essential to service sustainability and to supporting to individuals, families and communities facing challenges or in crisis.
27.3%
Projected growth
66%
Of the workforce employed in hospitals
128,516
Learners enrolled in human services qualifications (CHC)
22.9%
Learners enrolled in human services qualifications (CHC)
Sport and Recreation
Participation in sport and recreation is key to improving the physical and mental health and wellbeing of all Australians. The sector has a high reliance on casual work, with fragmented career pathways, limited mobility, increasing safety challenges, and diversity gaps, while growing participation, major events and preventative health priorities demand a skilled, adaptable and well supported workf