Regional childcare access belongs in workforce planning, Jobs and Skills Australia roadmap shows

Jobs and Skills Australia’s regional roadmap identifies childcare access as a barrier to employment and includes early childhood roles in its measure of essential service vacancies.

Regional early childhood education and care (ECEC) services face a connected challenge: they need qualified staff to operate, while families need access to childcare to take up work and training.

Both sides of that challenge appear in Jobs and Skills Australia’s Jobs and Skills Roadmap for Regional Australia – Phase 1. Published in July 2025, the roadmap examines how regional communities can develop skills, meet workforce demand and address barriers to participation. It is a national framework rather than an ECEC-specific workforce plan.

The roadmap includes early childhood teachers and child carers, including managers, among the occupations it uses to assess vacancies in essential services.

Using April 2025 data, Jobs and Skills Australia estimated an 8.5 per cent vacancy rate across regional essential service occupations, 2.4 percentage points above the rate in major cities. The measure also covers school teachers, health professionals and emergency service workers. It is not an ECEC-specific vacancy rate.

The report notes that recruitment conditions can differ substantially by location. An occupation may have sufficient workers nationally while employers in a particular region struggle to fill positions. For ECEC providers, that makes local evidence important when planning staffing or making the case for support.

Jobs and Skills Australia identifies lack of access to childcare as one of several possible barriers to employment, education and training in regional communities. Housing, transport, digital connectivity and financial pressures may also affect participation. The roadmap does not measure childcare’s separate contribution to these barriers.

The connection is significant for regional planning. A worker considering a job may need childcare to take it up; an ECEC service needs staff before it can offer more places. Decisions about training, recruitment and service availability therefore affect more than the early childhood sector alone.

The roadmap calls for closer attention to regional vocational education and training needs. Its proposed areas for further work include access to education and employment pathways, accommodation for students attending in-person training blocks, and training materials that reflect regional needs. These proposals apply across the skills system; they do not announce new ECEC training places or subsidies.

For ECEC leaders, the practical question is whether prospective educators in their community can access training and complete its requirements. Providers can help answer it by sharing their recruitment experience with training organisations and local workforce planners.

Jobs and Skills Australia argues that workforce approaches should reflect differences between regions, including dispersed populations and higher delivery costs. Its proposed policy principles call for community input and flexibility. They are a guide for future policy design, not a commitment to new ECEC incentives or funding.

The roadmap gives providers a way to bring two issues into the same conversation: the workforce needed to deliver ECEC and the childcare places that enable families to work and train. Current local evidence on staffing, training pathways and demand for places can show where those pressures meet.