Healthcare workers constitute Victoria’s largest workforce, with more than 340,000 people employed across settings including hospitals, community health organisations, private practice, and residential care.
Workforce profile
Victoria’s healthcare workforce has grown significantly since 2011, at a rate approximately 50% faster than the general population.
The workforce is becoming increasingly diverse, with a growing proportion of the workforce born overseas. However, we still need to do more work to ensure health careers are accessible to people from all backgrounds.
This is particularly the case for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who are 1% of Victoria’s population but only 0.36% of our healthcare workforce.
Table 1: Victoria's workforce profile
| Workforce profile | Total 2011 | Total 2021 | Change | Public health services 2011 | Public health services 2021 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Headcount | 228,425 | 342,239 | + 33.26% | 100,996 | 138,583 | + 37.22% |
| Full-time equivalent (FTE) | 183,679 | 271,355 | + 32.31% | 77,314.59 | 104,735.78 | + 35.47% |
| % female | 79% | 78% | - | 78.83% | 78.26% | - |
| Average age | 43.16 | 42.5 | - | 42.67 | 42.21 | - |
| % part-time (≤ 0.8 FTE) | 43.7% | 44.5% | + | 45.50% | 46.79% | + |
| Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander | 0.08% | 0.36% | + 377% | 0.08% | 0.36% | 377% |
| % born overseas | 32.4% | 39% | + | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2021)
Workforce categories and locations
The Victorian health sector overwhelmingly comprises clinical workers, such as medical, nursing and allied health workers, and workers in clinical support roles, such as medical technicians and personal care assistants.
Ahpra-registered professions account for most of the clinical workforce, in particular nurses (more than 80,000 registered nurses and 17,000 enrolled nurses) and doctors (over 26,000, including more than 6,500 general practitioners).
Allied health practitioners are another major workforce, including more than 8,500 psychologists, 7,500 physiotherapists and 6,900 pharmacists.
These workforces are supported by niche but growing roles such as public health physicians.
Table 2: Breakdown of workforce categories
| 2021 workforce categories | Headcount 2021 | Headcount 2021 (growth% since 2011) | Percentage breakdown | % metro | % rural |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clinical | 97,629 | 141,878 (+45%) | 41.5% | 73% | 27% |
| Clinical support | 47,068 | 75,805 (+61%) | 22.2% | 74% | 26% |
| Administrative | 45,009 | 68,179 (+51%) | 19.9% | 77% | 23% |
| Infrastructure and customer services | 21,344 | 29,638 (+39%) | 8.7% | 68% | 32% |
| Social services | 14,258 | 23,521 (+65%) | 6.9% | 75% | 25% |
| Other 4 | 2,728 | 2,835 (+4%) | 0.8% | 82% | 18% |
| Victoria population | - | - | - | 76% | 24% |
Future employment projections
The Victorian Skills Authority projects that Victoria will need 59,267 new workers by 2026, with 26% of these being required in rural and regional locations.
Demand for health services and workforce is increasing
The Victorian healthcare workforce grew by 33% between 2011 to 2021, and healthcare demand is expected to continue to grow. This is due to:
- population growth
- ageing population
- rise in chronic disease
- new health service infrastructure
- evolving community expectations.
Reforms to improve the quality and safety of care will further increase demand for healthcare workers over the next 10 years. These include the following.
Aged care reforms
In response to the Commonwealth Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the Australian government introduced mandatory minimum care time and 24/7 nursing requirements for government-funded residential aged care services.
This will create additional demand for aged care professionals including nurses and personal care workers.
Mental health system reforms
The Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System recommended significant workforce reform. This will require an estimated 2,500 additional workers in the public system.
National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
The introduction of NDIS funding in the disability sector led to a proliferation of private sector allied health opportunities. This created increased competition and demand for allied health services and professionals. An analysis of Ahpra-registered workers in pivotal roles shows that many professions will face workforce shortages. In particular, this includes allied health roles, some specialist medical roles and nursing roles.
Addressing changing needs
Some roles, like midwives, may have enough registered professionals to meet demand but experience operational shortages due to people not practicing, or fulfilling different roles; whilst strong training pipelines for other roles such as Paramedics present an opportunity to explore innovative models of care.
Workforce projections will be impacted by numerous factors including changes to policy, funding and population needs.
Victoria needs to be prepared to develop a sustainable health workforce that is ready to meet these known and potential changes in demand.
Spotlight: 16 priority roles
The National Skills Commission has identified shortages in more than 60 healthcare roles in Victoria.
The healthcare workforce comprises a huge range of roles, from registered professions providing direct service delivery to enabling roles that are essential to ensuring a well-functioning health system such as cooks, cleaners and health service managers. All of these roles play a pivotal role in Victoria's health system.
Modelling and sector-wide consultation has highlighted 16 roles the department will have an initial focus on.
Focus area 1 of this strategy aims to increase the supply of these important roles. This will ensure the health sector has the workforce capacity and capability needed now, and in 10 years’ time.
| Medical | Nursing | Allied Health |
|---|---|---|
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Contributing factors
- Size of the workforce
- Significant change to projected in workforce supply
- Significant change to workforce profile or patterns such as age or FTE
- Projected workforce capacity shortfalls
- Government priorities (such as reducing surgery backlog)
- Consultation
Themes from consultation and research
The department undertook extensive consultation for the strategy during 2022 and 2023. This process captured the expertise and lived experiences of thousands of people. Participants included those in clinical and non-clinical backgrounds, health services, professional bodies, unions and education providers.
We used an iterative, consultative and research-based approach (outlined in Appendix 1) to make sure the strategy focuses on the right things.
Environmental scanning, sector-wide consultation and data analysis identified a consistent set of themes that informed the focus areas of this strategy. These focus areas will make sure we concentrate our efforts on things that will have a meaningful and sustainable impact on the health sector.
Capacity and retention
Participants told us we need to retain skilled healthcare workers to deliver high-quality care. Many said the lack of available, experienced staff is a core source of system stress. Others expressed concern that experienced staff intended to leave the health workforce.
Retaining skilled and experienced people is integral to high-quality service delivery. It allows new professionals to be supervised and trained, which supports the growth and stability of the health system.
Agility and flexibility
A key issue for many healthcare workers is their ability to access flexible work arrangements. This includes rostering systems and approaches that allow them to meet their personal needs and plan for the future.
Participants also highlighted the need for greater career agility and flexibility, including greater portability of advanced clinical roles between employers and settings. They also wanted better options for career transitions and growth across roles, professions and workplaces.
Leadership
Strong leadership helps to create and maintain engaging workplaces. Participants highlighted the need for leadership development at all levels.
In particular, they said we need to focus on supporting people to transition effectively to management roles. We also need to ensure that the scope of these roles is achievable and appropriate.
Rural and regional challenges
Participants raised unique challenges in recruiting and retaining workers in rural and regional locations.
They told us that roles in rural and regional areas may need to be designed differently to those in metropolitan areas to ensure appropriate skill mixes. They also said healthcare workers and their families need greater support settling and building connections with the local community.
Further challenges included the availability of student placements, ongoing training and access to practical considerations like suitable accommodation.
Wellbeing
Participants were concerned about the wellbeing of the workforce. This included the intensification of work and escalating stress, with a lack of time for mentoring, supervision and education.
They also raised issues with informal expectations of overtime or additional tasks, and deep concern regarding increased violence towards healthcare workers.
Non-clinical workforces
Participants said it is difficult to attract and retain employees in non-clinical roles in areas such as finance, information technology, people services and logistics.
This is mainly because employment conditions in the health system are sometimes no longer competitive with other sectors where people with these skills can be employed.
They also noted that clinical support positions, such as assistant and technician roles, patient services roles, cooks and cleaners, among others, may have limited career development pathways.
Facilities and systems
Many participants identified the need to improve basic back-end processes and systems, as well as staff facilities, to support wellbeing and professional satisfaction.
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4 Other categorisation reflects roles that were not stated, inadequately stated, or niche (such as farming).
Reviewed 11 February 2024