It’s hard not to be cynical when two million people were thrown out of work or furloughed when the lockdowns hit in 2020 and 2021.
Now we find the federal government’s $4 billion employment program only funded a handful of jobs.
The JobMaker scheme only managed to create 7357 jobs, compared to the 450,000 it was intended to generate when the scheme was announced in October 2020.
The scheme paid employers up to $200 a week for creating new jobs for people aged 16 to 29 years who were on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance or the Parenting Payment, and $100 a week for 30- to 35-year-olds.
Labor Senator Katy Gallagher said the scheme had “fallen well short of expectations”.
JobMaker was a centrepiece policy of the October 2020 federal budget at the height of the pandemic.
The government department in charge of employment was asked for its assessment of the JobMaker program.
An FOI request made to the Department of Education, Skills and Employment for quarterly reports about the implementation of the JobMaker program, was refused.
The decision was made because “all reasonable steps have been taken to identify documents falling within the scope of your request” and none were found according to the person who was authorised to make the decision.
“I am satisfied that the documents you have requested do not exist,” wrote Jacki, who did not give a surname.
The payments were only available for new hires who had to work for at least 20 hours a week with all businesses except for major banks able to take part.
Last year’s budget revised the cost of the scheme down to $93 million as a result of the low take-up. It will be revised down further in next month’s budget.
Treasury officials said the lower than expected take-up was due to a range of factors. These included large employers such as supermarkets opting out early on and other new programs such as apprenticeship schemes diverting some demand.
The cost was also far lower than expected with some employees moving on to other roles reducing the payments needed to be made under the program.