Even If the Funding Existed, There Aren't the Carers. The Workforce Ceiling.

Post Three · The Workforce Constraint · 5 min read

Funding announcements get reported. Workforce shortfalls do not. The aged care sector debates the budget, the package numbers, and the rates of growth in Support at Home allocations. The conversation about who will actually deliver the care, when the funding catches up, is quieter. It is also more important.

The numbers are stark

The Lowy Institute figure assumes the Fair Work Commission's recent wage increases of up to 28.5% take effect. Even with the pay rise, the system is short by more than the entire current workforce of several major operators combined. Of the projected nursing shortage, between 17,551 and 19,287 full-time-equivalent nurses are specifically in aged care. Aged care is competing for nursing labour against public hospitals, private hospitals, and primary health, all of which can offer better hours, higher pay, and clearer career progression.

Funding cannot create carers

This is the simplest and most important thing to understand about Support at Home. Every additional package the Commonwealth releases requires a person who can deliver the care it funds. If the package is funded and the carer does not exist, the package is theoretical. The 364-day average wait reflects not only funding constraints but workforce constraints. Even where packages have been allocated, the providers who hold them often cannot recruit the staff to deliver them.

A funded package without a carer to deliver it is theoretical.

Two direct implications for retirement village operators

First, the village's own staffing model is under the same pressure. Operators reporting up to one-third of residents now receiving formal care in situ are also reporting that their own care coordination and wellness staffing needs have moved from approximately three staff per village to between five and ten. Cam Ansell, who has co-authored the most rigorous home care research in the sector and advises on retirement village M&A, has modelled the longer-term shift at 15 to 50 employees per 100 residents. The labour pool the village competes in to fill those roles is the same labour pool the Support at Home providers and the residential aged care providers are competing in.

Second, partnerships with Support at Home providers will be supply-constrained for the foreseeable future. An operator who plans to "just refer residents to a Support at Home provider" is planning against the constraint that providers do not have enough carers to take on more residents fast.

The implication

The capability that will matter most over the next five years is not how much funding flows. It is how much each carer hour can deliver. Operational visibility - early identification of resident decline, prioritised attention to residents at greatest risk, fewer wasted visits - is the lever that makes a constrained workforce go further. The villages that build that capability will get more from each carer hour than those that do not.

That capability is the third operational requirement we set out in Post 5. Before we get there, the fourth pressure - supply - closes the last assumed pressure valve.

Sources: Lowy Institute citing Department of Health workforce modelling; Ageing Australia workforce strategy (December 2025); The Weekly Source coverage of Cam Ansell's Leaders Summit comments (November 2025).