The country’s largest childcare operator says workers are leaving the sector for higher-paying roles in industries such as aged care, as calls grow for the federal government to fund a pay rise for early childhood educators or risk its early childhood agenda.
“You could stagger the tax cuts that we’re getting – and indeed, that’s something that I’ve been in favour of from the viewpoint of inflation.”Goodstart Early Learning, the nation’s largest childcare operator with more than 650 centres, said the sector had suffered significant worker shortages for the past few years as educators left for higher wages in other industries such as aged care.
Jobs site Seek says the market for aged and disabled carers has turned around “dramatically” since the very tight labour market of mid-2022. There is now an oversupply of aged care workers while childcare centres still struggle to fill vacancies. Ms McDonald said this was due to higher wages, larger pools of migrant workers and improvements to the company’s recruitment processes. She noted the applicants weren’t necessarily from other industries. Retention had also improved, with voluntary turnover down from 40 per cent two years ago to 16 per cent today.