Payments for employers who hire an eligible unemployed Queenslander

Overview

The Back to Work program is designed to give businesses the confidence to employ Queenslanders who have experienced a period of unemployment and help workers facing disadvantage in the labour market.

Incentive payments and other supports are available to employers who hire an eligible previously unemployed Queenslander from a vulnerable cohort who has experienced a minimum period of unemployment directly prior to commencing work with them.

Vulnerable cohorts include:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (minimum unemployment period of 8 weeks)
• people with disability (minimum unemployment period of 8 weeks)
• long term unemployed people (unemployed 52 weeks or longer).

The program is available throughout regional Queensland and in select areas of South East Queensland (SEQ).

The regions include:

• Wide Bay Burnett
• North Queensland
• Far North Queensland
• Mackay / Whitsunday
• Central Queensland
• North West Queensland
• South West Queensland.

The south-east Queensland local government areas include:

• Ipswich
• Lockyer Valley
• Logan
• Moreton Bay
• Scenic Rim
• Somerset.

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To be eligible for funding, employers must:

• be compliant with workplace health and safety, industrial relations and taxation legislation
• demonstrate a genuine commitment to ongoing employment of the employee.

To be eligible, the job offered to the worker must be mainly located in the eligible regions/local government areas and either be:

• ongoing paid full-time (at least 35 hours per week on average), or
• ongoing paid part-time (at least 20 hours per week on average), or
• for a person with a disability who has a workplace assessment to work between 8 and 20 hours per week, ongoing paid part-time with hours consistent with their approved benchmark.

Eligible employees must:

• be a permanent resident of Australia and live in Queensland
• belong to a vulnerable cohort
• not have displaced an existing worker
• have been unemployed for the minimum specified period for their group/cohort
• not be a full-time student
• not have worked for the employer in the 12 months directly before starting the current role with the employer.