A LEADING state community and employment services provider has called for urgent action to help unemployed young people across the north-west.
According to Mission Australia, about two out of five 15- to 19-year-olds in Melbourne’s north-west are either not undertaking full-time study or are out of work.
State director Emma Cassar said the best way to assist young people into the workforce was through strategically linking employment and community services.
“At Mission Australia we provide support and assistance to hundreds of young Victorians struggling with unemployment each year,” she said.
“In most cases, to help these young people to transform their lives, it’s not as simple as finding them a job.
“We are seeing more and more young people coming to us with a range of issues and some are battling homelessness or family breakdown.”
Mission Australia Employment Youth Solutions Victorian general manager Kylee Bates said high youth unemployment rates across Melbourne highlighted the need for governments to improve the support offered to young people.
“In some areas such as north-west Melbourne, this teenage unemployment rate is more than four times the unemployment rate of the city’s general population,” she said.
The federal government’s new Wage Connect subsidy has been one weapon in the fight against unemployment.
Gorton MP Brendan O’Connor said 60 previously unemployed residents had found work since January thanks to the scheme, which pays a wage subsidy to employers who take on and retain eligible job seekers.
The $5700 subsidy – the equivalent of the average rate of Newstart Allowance over 26 weeks – helps offset wage and training costs for the first six months of employment.
It also supports people who have been on income support payments for at least two years.
“It’s great to see this program is delivering jobs for mature-age job seekers, people who are homeless, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and job seekers with a disability,” he said.
“Once you have been unemployed for a long period it can be tremendously difficult to find a new job.”
After almost seven years of unemployment and with the help of an employment agency, Deer Park’s David Musgrove has found work at Planet A Phone Repairs in St Albans.
The 30-year-old suffered depression and struggled financially while he was unemployed.
“I feel great about going to work, especially as I’m doing something I really enjoy,” he said.
