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This was published 2 years ago
Pandemic-led cleaner shortage hits vulnerable people, busy families at home
A shortage of house cleaners caused by two years of border closures and lockdowns is disrupting the work-life juggle for busy families and causing genuine hardship for people who are elderly or have disabilities.
Domestic cleaning companies report turning away thousands of dollars worth of business leads generated through their websites every day, including for vulnerable people who have funding for cleaning services through the National Disability Insurance Scheme, aged care or workers compensation packages.
Susan and Mark Inwood are franchisees of Houseproud Cleaning for Penrith, Richmond and Windsor.Credit: Steven Siewert
Meanwhile, community Facebook groups are flooded with frustrated consumers – mostly working parents – asking for local recommendations for cleaners. Searching for cleaners online often results in an automated quote and provisional booking, then a phone call or email later advising that no teams are available.
Susan Inwood, a joint franchisee for Houseproud Cleaning in Penrith, Richmond and Windsor with her husband Mark, said the couple had been working overtime just to service existing clients.
“In December we knocked back 95 potential customers in just one month because we didn’t have the team or the capacity to do the cleaning,” Ms Inwood said.
Like most cleaning businesses, the Inwoods employ a mix of international students – who were locked out of the country through most of 2020 and 2021 – and middle-aged women, who bore the brunt of the responsibility for childcare and supervising remote learning during the lockdowns.
Ms Inwood said a job advertisement on Gumtree or SEEK before the pandemic would generate 250 applications over two weeks. Last year the Inwoods advertised on Gumtree for two and a half months without a single application, before turning to a recruiter who took four months to find two people. A recent hire took another seven months to find.
The problem is national but in Sydney, Houseproud Cleaning figures show the shortage is most acute on the northern beaches because of high demand and long travel time from where the cleaners live; and the Central Coast, which has seen an influx of families relocating from the city. Sun-Herald readers have also reported problems finding cleaners in areas such as the inner west, eastern suburbs and Ryde.
Absolute Domestics founder and managing director Joy Vess said she is experiencing a severe shortage of staff for her business nationwide.
“All of last year, for love nor money, we couldn’t get the candidates,” Ms Vess said. “We’re disappointing everybody – we’re disappointing our clients because they’re waiting for us to find the cleaners and we’re also knocking back new business as well, and we’ve choked down our advertising.”
Ms Vess said some local applicants chafed at her requirement for staff to be vaccinated, while others had increased childcare responsibilities at home or were able to cope on government payments.
Susan and Mark Inwood have had to turn away thousands of dollars worth of business including for people with NDIS or aged care packages because of labour shortages.Credit: Steven Siewert
The award rate for a casual cleaner employed by a service is $27.14 an hour at entry level and rises to $29.59 an hour, with additional loadings for evenings or weekends.
Ms Vess said she had raised wages to attract staff and now paid $35 an hour in Sydney and Melbourne, and $30 an hour in Adelaide and Brisbane. She wrote to customers last October to advise of a price hike of $10-20 per clean, depending on the hours booked.
Houseproud Cleaning director Paul Mitchell wrote in a letter to Immigration Minister Alex Hawke in January that he was experiencing demand for $40 an hour, which was “unsustainable”. For example, the NDIS caps the cost of house cleaning at $50.33 an hour in most parts of Australia, but the business has to pay the higher wage bill and also overheads such as insurance and the cost of compliance with NDIS registration requirements.
He said his business had not grown for two years because he can’t find staff and if this continued, his franchisees would leave.
More importantly, he said, it would hamper the ability of Australians to age at home rather than move into residential aged care or the ability of people on the NDIS to live independently. “Who is going to do this work when providers like us cannot get the staff?”
After the borders closed in March 2020 to fight the pandemic, Australia slowly started to reopen late last year, with fully vaccinated international students and backpackers on working holiday visas among those allowed back in on December 15.
Since then, official figures show more than 57,000 international students and 3603 backpackers have entered the country. The government has granted 28,000 Working Holiday Maker visas since November and a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs said it was clearing the backlog in applications.
Mr Mitchell wrote in his letter that the 200,000 students and skilled migrants expected to enter Australia this year “won’t touch the sides across all of the industries in need”.
The letter asks why “dog trainers”, “kennel workers” and “brothel operators” were listed in the subclass lists for skilled migrants, but “home care service workers” such as cleaners were not.
“In a pandemic-stricken world, where hygiene is of paramount priority, our industry should be considered critical and we ask that you come to our assistance,” the letter says.
The department spokesperson said “the government is committed to supporting Australia’s economic recovery through addressing critical skills shortages and workforce gaps by supporting industry to attract and retain skilled visa holders”.