Updated 3 October 2026. Two monthly profiles have been published since this piece ran, for 31 July and 31 August 2026. We downloaded and read both on 3 October. The story below describes the first eight months, to 30 June 2026; the later figures sit beside the June ones here.
| Measure | 30 Jun 2026 | 31 Jul 2026 | 31 Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caseload | 253,370 | 254,840 | 257,210 |
| Suspended | 64,665 (25.5%) | 66,975 (26.3%) | 67,750 (26.3%) |
| Work preparation share | 71.7% | 71.1% | 70.7% |
| Job search | 15,045 (5.9%) | 16,290 (6.4%) | 17,040 (6.6%) |
| First Nations | 23,230 (9.2%) | 23,390 (9.2%) | 23,690 (9.2%) |
| Outcomes in the month, 12, 26 and 52 week | 2,915 / 1,305 / 1,365 | 2,855 / 1,465 / 1,300 | 2,715 / 2,200 / 1,175 |
| Outcomes since 1 Nov 2025, 12, 26 and 52 week | 15,875 / 12,150 / 8,830 | 18,755 / 13,675 / 10,180 | 21,475 / 15,900 / 11,410 |
Each column is from its own edition's caseload summary and outcomes tabs; shares are our calculation from the published counts, which the department rounds to the nearest five. The rolling outcome figures count every outcome since the program began, so the window is ten months, not twelve, and still reaches across the transition. The August workbook also restates earlier months: it now gives June's outcomes as 2,955, 1,370 and 1,415 against the 2,915, 1,305 and 1,365 in the June edition. In two months the caseload grew by 3,840, the suspended share edged up, and the movement into job search continued. Nothing in it changes what the data cannot tell you.
The change was pitched as a simplification. The department’s own program page
says You can choose your provider
and You can move to a new provider at any
time
, that There are no more time limits
, and that
You can be on the program even if you only work a few hours a week
.
Nine months on, that pitch is testable, because the department publishes a monthly
profile: referrals, commencements, exits, caseload and, latterly, outcomes. It is not
obvious that it does. The department’s own Inclusive Employment Australia data and
reports page says we will publish Inclusive Employment Australia reports on data.gov.au
and link to them from that page. As at today it links to none of them, and the page was last
modified on 30 October 2025, the day before the program started. The reports are there; you
have to know to search data.gov.au for them.
The caseload has barely moved. The mix inside it has
| As at | Caseload | Suspended | Suspended share | Work preparation | Job search |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Nov 2025 | 245,860 | 58,598 | 23.8% | 76.7% | 0.7% |
| 31 Dec 2025 | 246,485 | 57,862 | 23.5% | 76.8% | 1.3% |
| 31 Jan 2026 | 245,528 | 58,762 | 23.9% | 76.3% | 2.1% |
| 28 Feb 2026 | 246,625 | 61,285 | 24.8% | 75.1% | 3.1% |
| 31 Mar 2026 | 248,705 | 65,570 | 26.4% | 74.2% | 3.8% |
| 30 Apr 2026 | 251,360 | 64,215 | 25.5% | 73.4% | 4.4% |
| 31 May 2026 | 252,405 | 64,585 | 25.6% | 72.6% | 5.3% |
| 30 Jun 2026 | 253,370 | 64,665 | 25.5% | 71.7% | 5.9% |
Source: IEA monthly profiles, caseload summary tab, each edition. Shares are of total caseload and are our own calculation from the published counts.
Two movements sit inside a nearly flat total. The caseload rose by 7,510 across eight months, about 3 per cent. Underneath, the share of participants in the pre-employment work preparation phase fell steadily from 76.7 to 71.7 per cent, while the share in the job search phase climbed from 0.7 to 5.9 per cent, or roughly 1,700 people to 15,045.
That second line is the most encouraging number in the whole series and deserves to be said plainly: people are moving out of preparation and into looking for work, month on month, without interruption. It is also from a very low base, and after eight months, more than seven in ten participants are still in work preparation.
The first thing the data cannot tell you
A quarter of the caseload is suspended, and that share has risen. It would be easy, and
wrong, to read that as a failure rate. The department’s own glossary defines suspension
as a period of time, recorded by either a IEA provider or Services Australia, during which
a participant is not required to participate
, and gives the reasons as
including part-time work, temporary incapacity to work and major personal crisis
.
Corrected 23 August 2026. This piece
originally attributed four claims to Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek as things she
said when announcing the program, and cited a transcript published on the department’s
program page. There is no transcript on that page. The wording quoted is the
department’s own program-page copy, and it is now attributed there and quoted exactly:
one quotation previously read even if you can only work a few hours a week
against the page’s even if you only work a few hours a week
. A claim that
around 15,000 more people would be able to access services has been removed: it appears in
none of the sources this piece cites and we could not verify it. Nothing in the data analysis
below relied on any of it.
Read that list again. It puts part-time work in the same bucket as major personal crisis. One of those is the program doing exactly what the department’s program page describes, someone staying on it while working a few hours a week. The other is a person in trouble. The published data does not separate them, so the single largest group of non-participating people in the program, 64,665 of them, is unreadable. Whether the rise from 23.8 to 25.5 per cent is good news or bad news is not answerable from what is published, and it is the first thing anyone assessing this program would want to know.
The second thing the data cannot tell you
Whether Inclusive Employment Australia is doing better than the program it replaced.
Outcome figures did not appear at all in the first seven monthly reports. We checked every edition: the November 2025 through April 2026 profiles each contain eight tabs and no outcomes data. The outcomes tabs appear for the first time in the 31 May 2026 report, and the department’s change log dates their addition to 5 June 2026. So for the first seven months of a program whose purpose is employment, the public record carried no employment outcomes.
What is published now is genuine and worth having. In June 2026 alone there were 2,915 twelve-week outcomes, 1,305 twenty-six-week outcomes and 1,365 fifty-two-week outcomes. Over the rolling twelve months the figures are 15,875, 12,150 and 8,830.
But those rolling figures cannot be attributed to the new program, and the department says
so. Flow data is included on the basis of a twelve month rolling window
, which for a
program that began in November 2025 still reaches back into the Disability Employment
Services era. And on outcomes the report is explicit that
IEA transition participants as at 01-Nov-2025, who were already tracking to an outcome and
achieved the outcome in IEA are included
. A person forty-eight weeks into a job under the
old program who reached fifty-two weeks under the new one counts as an Inclusive Employment
Australia outcome. That is a reasonable accounting choice and it is disclosed. It also means
the first genuinely comparable full year does not exist yet.
What the data does show clearly
Three things stand out and are not in doubt. Psychiatric conditions and physical disability are, between them, four in five of the caseload: 103,210 and 100,725 people respectively, 40.7 and 39.8 per cent. The program skews older than its framing suggests, with 31.7 per cent of participants aged 55 or over. And 23,230 participants are First Nations, 9.2 per cent of the caseload.
Our view
The transparency here is better than the presentation of it. Eight consecutive monthly releases, a published glossary, and change notes that tell you when a tab was added are more than many programs offer, and the department states its own limitations rather than hiding them. That deserves saying before any criticism.
The criticism is that the two design choices that most affect what can be concluded both run the same way. A suspension category that merges working part-time with being in crisis, and outcome reporting that began seven months late on a rolling window spanning the transition, together mean the program cannot yet be judged on the published record, and will not be until at least a full year of post-transition data exists. We are not suggesting that is deliberate. We are saying that a reader wanting to know whether this reform worked cannot find out yet, and that splitting the suspension reasons would be a small change that answers a large question.
The practical next date is straightforward. A twelve-month window entirely inside Inclusive Employment Australia becomes possible from the November 2026 report. We will read it.
How we sourced this
Every figure above is taken from the Inclusive Employment Australia monthly profile workbooks published by the Department of Social Services on data.gov.au. We downloaded all eight editions, from 30 November 2025 to 30 June 2026, and read them directly. Caseload, suspension and phase figures are from each edition’s caseload summary tab; outcome figures are from the June 2026 edition’s outcomes tabs. Percentage shares of the caseload are our own calculation from the published counts, and the count of tabs per edition is our own inspection of each workbook.
What we have not done. We have not compared these figures with Disability Employment Services data, because the department’s own notes make clear the two are not directly comparable across the transition. We have not audited the department’s counting: outcome counts are based on when payment claims were created, not when a person started a job, which will shift figures between months. Caseload figures are a point-in-time snapshot at month end. The published counts are rounded, so our percentages carry that rounding. We have not obtained any breakdown of suspension reasons, because none is published; if one exists, we would like to see it. Nothing here is a claim about any individual provider or participant, and we name none.
Sources
How this was made. Researched, drafted and edited by AI systems under our editorial rules, from the 3 primary sources below. How this site works.
- Department of Social Services, DSS Inclusive Employment Australia (IEA) monthly profile (eight XLSX editions, 30 November 2025 to 30 June 2026, all downloaded and read 4 August 2026; the 31 July and 31 August 2026 editions downloaded and read 3 October 2026 for the update above): every caseload, suspension, phase and outcome figure above; the glossary definition of suspension; the note that flow data uses a twelve month rolling window; the note that transition participants tracking to an outcome are included; and the change log dating the outcomes tabs to 5 June 2026.
- Department of Social Services, Inclusive Employment Australia (program page, read 4 August 2026, re-read 23 August 2026): that the program replaced Disability Employment Services on 1 November 2025, and the page's own statements on time limits, provider choice and part-time work.
- Department of Social Services, Inclusive Employment Australia data and reports (read 4 August 2026): the undertaking to publish reports on data.gov.au and link them from that page, and the absence of any such link as at that date.
Work in employment services, or read these workbooks differently? Tell us and we will check it against the published data and log the outcome here.