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Re-Engage Age Pensioners to Help Solve Australia’s Critical Workforce Shortages

Let’s lobby politicians with a smart strategy.

Can Age Pensioners Solve Workforce Shortages?

We are being presented with some failings over the past decades that our political leaders had not successfully been addressing.

Age Pensioners living below the poverty line and not able to pay for the most basic living expenses like rent and food. We are also told of the need to find and increase the pool of available workers for many of our industries.

Imagine if a pensioned retired nurses could supplement their income for the max number of hours, they would be capable and willing to work without affecting their pension. That’s smart.

The Problems

  1. Lack of people to help rebuild available and skilled workers’ bank.
  2. Pensioners living below the poverty line.
  3. Low national productivity improvements.

The Potential Solutions To:

  1. Not enough qualified staff in this low unemployment market.
  2. Improve the physiological health and value our mid-life community members.
  3. Lift below the breadline pensions that our skilled retirees may be trying to live on.
  4. The need to lift the productivity level of the country.

Imagine If:

  1. Age pensioners solve workforce shortages.
  2. Approved pensioners were allowed to earn up to the minimum award relevant wage of at least $23:00 per hour ($45,448 per annum) without affecting their pension.
  3. We utilized the skills of a broader population’s lifting our productivity.
  4. We expanded the GDP by increasing the spending capacity of pensioners

The Potential Benefits:

  1. The increase of committed workers for critically short-staffed industries.
  2. Reducing poverty in the pension community.
  3. Expanded domestic economy as pensioners generally spend their additional windfalls.
  4. Increase in PAYG tax revenues from the additional wage payments.

The Potential Negatives:

  1. Not many

I believe our political masters should see the benefits of such a concept.

Age pensioners solve workforce shortages

Case Example

  1. A pension, of let say $800 per week was subsidized with part time paid job of 3 days per week of $524 less tax of $30 = Net $1,394 per week; now that’s a living wage for pensioners.
  2. They spent the extra income on day-today expenditure or if not on themselves on their grand kids thereby lifting of GDP of local businesses.
  3. The engaging of mid-life employees back into the workforce improved their health

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