Let’s unpack why the federal government needs to #RaiseTheRate of Newstart and Youth Allowance.
The best place to start this conversation is with a simple question – why do we have Newstart and Youth Allowance?
The short answer is that they are payments given to people who are looking for work or people who are studying/training full time. Or at least, that’s what they used to be.
Back in the day, it used to be that the government would prop up your income when you lost/left/needed a job. It was a ‘transitional payment’ while you found a new place to work.
It was never really intended to be something that people relied on as an income in and of itself.
That premise has changed in the last couple decades though – especially since the global financial crisis. In 2006 we saw entry level jobs diminish and unemployment rates surge. Where finding employment used to be (relatively) easy, it’s become a really intense struggle for thousands of young people in South Australia.
Today, figures show that there are 19 people applying for every entry level position job. The unemployment rate for young people in SA, as of September 2019, is at 12.7%. There are currently 18,500 people between the age of 15-24 in SA who cannot find work.
We have a generation of people who are finding employment almost impossible. We have a job market that isn’t producing enough jobs for the number of people looking for work.
Which brings us back to Newstart and Youth Allowance. Again, while they USED TO BE transitional payments – a support system for people going from one job to the next – that social context simply doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, we have people who are becoming embedded in unemployment because there are not enough jobs for them. The payment is now, for a lot of young people, the only thing they have to support themselves while they hunt for jobs that don’t exist. Some young people are forced to use it as their only life raft, and it is so inadequate that it isn’t keeping them afloat.
We need to fundamentally rethink what the payment is, the purpose it’s intended to serve, and ultimately the amount it gives to support young people.
Newstart is currently $245 a week, and Youth Allowance is at $227. Here’s how those numbers stack up in relation to the poverty line:
The effect of holding young people below the poverty line is really, really problematic – and we know this from what young people have told us in consultations and surveys.
We know that the low rate of income support is affecting young people’s access to basic, vital things like health, housing, education, nutrition, transport and even their ability to gain meaningful employment. Young people regularly report going without meals, not being able to afford access to appropriate housing, and foregoing medicine, dental care and optometrist services.
When we look at the role Newstart and Youth Allowance are playing in today’s society, the incredible difficulty of finding entry level jobs, and the human cost of holding young people below the poverty line, it becomes pretty clear that we have a broken system that needs fixing.
Young people are being marginalised and excluded because of circumstances beyond their control – they are being subjected to poverty and hardship because there aren’t enough jobs. The rate of Newstart and Youth Allowance must immediately be raised to reflect the current cost of living and to enable recipients to live, work, study or look for employment free from the impacts of poverty.
We need to #RaiseTheRate.
Click these thinks to read more about why we need to stop blaming young people for the unemployment crisis, young people’s experiences with the Jobactive program and our official submission into the federal parliament’s inquiry into the adequacy of Newstart.
If you want to leave a comment and tell us why you think we need to #RaiseTheRate, or if you want to unpack what living on Newstart or Youth Allowance is like, then drop it in the box below!
