For years now, when aged care kitchens have struggled to recruit and retain staff, we have tended to focus on where the workers have gone.
Perhaps we should be looking more closely at what they are being offered.
Under the current Aged Care Award, an entry-level Food Services Assistant has a minimum ordinary rate of approximately $27.77 an hour. A Level 3 Food Services Assistant or Cook is approximately $29.98.
An adult Level 1 employee under the Fast-Food Industry Award is $27.81.
There’s nothing wrong with what fast-food employees are paid. The comparison simply tells us something about the labour market aged care is competing in.
We have reconsidered work value before
Australia has spent several years reassessing the value of aged care work. Direct-care classifications and wages have changed substantially, while nursing has undergone its own work-value process and staged increases.
Food services were not completely excluded.
In 2023, additional work-value recognition was extended to the single most senior food-services employee at a facility or site at specified classification levels. General workers under the Aged Care Award later received a 3 per cent work-value increase from January 2025.
At the same time, residential aged care introduced Standard 6, a dedicated Quality Standard for food and nutrition, with clearer expectations around food, individual needs and preferences, safety and the dining experience.
This isn’t an argument that a catering assistant should earn what an AIN or nurse earns. They are different jobs with different qualifications, responsibilities and accountabilities. It’s about whether the broader food-services workforce has kept pace as both aged care work and the expectations surrounding food have changed.
The competition is everywhere
A provider benchmarking its catering wages against other aged care providers may conclude it is competitive. But the worker themselves may be comparing aged care with fast food, hospitality, retail, cleaning, warehousing or delivery work. They are looking at pay, roster, workload, flexibility and responsibility.
Benchmarking may tell you that your wage is competitive within aged care. It doesn’t tell you whether the job itself is competitive.
That matters when 75.6 per cent of chefs participating in the 2026 Aged Care Kitchen Pulse reported staffing shortages. We already know many kitchens are struggling. Understanding why requires looking beyond vacancies and headcount.
Catering turnover deserves a closer look
As wages and work-value recognition have shifted across aged care and the broader labour market, catering turnover itself deserves greater scrutiny.
Providers should know how long catering vacancies remain open, whether applications and retention are changing, and where experienced employees go when they leave. Catering workforce data should also be visible in its own right rather than disappearing into broad categories such as hotel services, support services or ancillary employees.
Most aged care executives would expect clear visibility over nursing and direct-care workforce pressures. If food and nutrition now warrant its own Quality Standard, the workforce delivering it warrants similar attention.
Turnover also carries a cost through recruitment, onboarding, training, overtime, agency coverage and lost operational knowledge. Higher wages alone will not solve that. Rostering, workload, leadership, career pathways and culture all matter, but remuneration has to be part of the discussion.
An Award establishes the legal minimum an employee can be paid – not what the market requires to attract and retain that employee
For providers, the practical starting point is the data:
- Look at catering turnover by role, vacancy duration and repeat recruitment
- Keep track of where people are going when they leave
- Check whether classifications still reflect the work being performed, and
- Compare the employment proposition with the wider labour market, rather than aged care alone.
Australia has spent several years reconsidering the value of work in aged care. We have also raised the expectations around food, nutrition and dining. Award compliance alone is not a workforce strategy and as the competition for catering staff has changed, it’s time our workforce thinking changed with it.
