What are Australia's jobs programs really for? The answer may be that employment was never the point.

Every few years, governments announce a new overhaul of employment services.

This month it was Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth announcing changes to the compulsory activities people on JobSeeker can be forced to undertake.

The debate always focuses on the details. Which activities should people be required to do? How many appointments should they attend? What new obligations should be added or removed?

But after thirty years of evidence, we should be asking a more fundamental question. What if helping people find work is not actually what this system is designed to do?

That sounds like a provocative claim, but it is hard to reach any other conclusion when you look at the evidence.

If the purpose of employment services was helping people find work, we would expect governments to evaluate programs based on whether they helped people find work.

Instead, when I examined government evaluations of some of Australia’s biggest employment programs for an Anglicare Australia study, I found something extraordinary. Programs were introduced on the promise that they would help people find jobs. Then, when it came time to evaluate them, governments often didn’t measure whether they led to jobs at all. Instead they measured things like confidence, social connections and ‘resilience.’

Imagine if a government launched a literacy program and then evaluated it by measuring whether people made friends by turning up. Imagine if a hospital introduced a new treatment and then assessed whether patients enjoyed talking to their doctors. People would rightly ask whether anyone was interested in the actual outcome. Yet that is exactly how Australia evaluates some of its most expensive employment programs.

The obvious question is why. Why spend billions of dollars on programs that supposedly exist to help people find work, then refuse to measure whether they achieve that goal? The answer may be that employment was never the point.

Unemployment itself is not an accident. The Reserve Bank has spent much of the past year trying to increase unemployment on purpose. In many cases, there simply are not enough suitable jobs available. Entry-level jobs have fallen dramatically over the past two decades. People without degrees or advanced qualifications are competing for a shrinking pool of opportunities.

In such a competitive environment, people out of work already know how to apply for jobs. What they often lack is something far more practical. It might be a driver’s licence, reliable transport, access to childcare, a qualification, or simply a suitable job to apply for.

Governments know all of this. They know unemployment is shaped by the economy. They know there are not enough suitable jobs for everyone. Yet they continue pretending unemployment can be solved through compulsory activities. If somebody cannot find work, the answer they provide is another workshop, another course on workplace norms, another compliance requirement or another compulsory activity. The message this sends is that unemployed people need fixing.

This is much easier than acting on the real causes of unemployment, which would require governments to confront much bigger questions about how the economy is structured. Compulsory activities offer a simpler alternative. They create the appearance of action without requiring governments to challenge the structures that create unemployment.

They also support a lucrative industry in the process. Billions of dollars now flow to private employment service providers whose business model depends on people being churned through appointments, activities and compliance requirements. Providers are paid to monitor people, refer them to activities and enforce obligations. Many also deliver the training courses people are forced to attend.

The result is a system where people become revenue streams. Government has created an entire industry that now lobbies for its own continued existence.

People who need help overcoming barriers to work become customers in a taxpayer-funded industry. The longer somebody remains trapped in employment services, the more appointments they attend, the more activities they complete and the more opportunities there are for providers to generate revenue from managing them.

Meanwhile, people are gaslit by being told that system exists to help them. But if helping people were genuinely the goal, the system would look very different.

Instead of another compulsory activity, it might help them get childcare. Instead of a seminar on workplace behaviours, it might help them gain a TAFE qualification. Instead of forcing somebody into another resume workshop, it might help them get a driver’s licence.

In fact, driving lessons would probably do more to improve many people’s job prospects than large parts of the employment services system. At least a driver’s licence is something employers actually ask for.

The system is built on a belief that unemployed people shouldn’t be trusted to manage their own time or make decisions about their own lives. That belief has produced endless bureaucracy, countless compliance requirements and a vast industry dedicated to policing people rather than supporting them.

What if we started from the opposite assumption? What if we accepted that people themselves usually know what stands between them and their goals? What if we spent less money policing people and more money helping them get the things they actually need?

After thirty years of compulsory activities, pointless trainings, and privatised employment services, the evidence is in.

The real lesson from decades of harm is not that we need to tweak compulsory activities. It is that we need to abandon compulsion and place our trust in people instead of providers.

Governments can no longer claim that people need fixing. The thing that isn’t working is the system itself.

Maiy Azize is the Deputy Director of Anglicare Australia

Correction: This article originally referred to Amanda Rishworth as Social Services Minister. This has been amended to Employment Minister.