Jobs4Youth: A Value Proposition for the Public Sector

The South Australian public sector faces significant knowledge transfer, leadership development and replacement challenges over the next decade arising from workforce ageing. Its workforce is ageing rapidly, as is the private sector workforce, because over 40 per cent of its employees are baby boomers. The ageing of the workforce is not a problem in and of itself. The problem is that these 20,000 or so baby boomers will retire over the next decade. The attendant problems related to the cost of recruiting a replacement cohort and the loss of corporate knowledge will then become apparent. The second problem to be managed during the next decade is the intergenerational transfer of knowledge.
A wave of retirements during the next decade will necessitate refining strategies for renewal of the public sector. In 2014, in A Modern Public Sector, the Premier announced The Jobs4Youth initiative. This is a program designed to create 800 traineeships for young people over the period 2014 to 2017 in order to renew the public sector. The aim of this report is to examine the strategic merits of an extension of the Jobs4Youth initiative beyond its present scope. In 2015, Jobs4Youth expanded to included graduate recruitment.