Wages are about eighty-six cents of every revenue dollar in disability support, so a $38.1 billion reform package is mostly a reduction in paid labour. This paper counts the hours removed by its largest measure, the community access reset: how many, from which workers, through which mechanism, and when.
Our previous paper's central case cuts exposed community access budgets by 35 percent at full phase-in and moves half of those supports from one-to-one to one-to-three groups. A participant who converts keeps their hours at a third of the price, so their spending falls by two thirds, and so do the worker hours behind it. Half the pool at two thirds off is a 33 percent cut. That leaves two points for the half that stays one-to-one, whose budgets fall by only about 3 percent.
The tabled mature saving, $4.3 billion a year, is about 32 percent of the scheme's exposed budgets after participant exits, so group pricing alone can deliver almost all of it. The result holds if converted participants also give up some hours, because that budget stays with the one-to-one cohort and total worker hours barely move. The saving will hardly show in participant outcome data. It will show in full in rosters.
The NDIA's Disability Support Worker Cost Model builds a price cap from an award wage: $38.50 an hour at SCHADS 2.3, plus leave, superannuation and overheads, gives a weekday cap of $73.58. Run in reverse, it turns revenue into a workforce.
The $19.8 billion of in-scope revenue supports about 143,500 direct support FTE, or 240,000 workers at the census average of 22.7 hours a week. Most are part-time or casual, between a fifth and a quarter leave each year, and at average hours they earn $35,000 to $45,000. Most are also paid below the cost model's benchmark classification, a gap worth about 12 percent of the exposed book's wage bill. The Fair Work Commission's provisional 15 percent rise in Schedule E home care rates from 1 October 2026 closes part of that gap with no matching price change, adding about four and a half cents of wage cost to every exposed revenue dollar.
By 2028-29 the sector loses about 30,000 FTE, 21 percent of its hours. Participant attrition accounts for 20,500: people leaving the scheme take their worker hours with them across every support line. Group conversion removes 9,700. The one-to-one book loses about 500, because its budgets barely move. Under-fill and weekend re-banding add about 700 back, since both use more worker hours for the same revenue.
Hours fall almost exactly in line with revenue, because group prices are set so that a worker hour earns about the same at any ratio. Community access is slightly more labour-intensive per dollar than the rest of the sector, which pulls hours down a little faster; under-fill and re-banding offset it.
Under-fill is the only lever that keeps workers employed without revenue. At the central case it holds about 360 FTE in the sector at 2028-29, each costing a loaded salary of $96,500 with nothing billed against it, $35 million in total. With vehicle, venue and minimum-engagement costs added, each position kept costs about 2.2 salaries. That is the price of running groups below ratio to hold staff through the transition.
Saturday and Sunday price limits are 1.41 and 1.81 times the weekday rate, because the cap applies the penalty loading to the whole price stack. Supervision and the back office are still paid at weekday rates, so the extra funding lands in margin. When budgets fall, the same dollars buy more weekday hours, and the central case moves 60 percent of the converted book's evening and weekend hours to weekdays.
The shift adds back about 300 FTE by 2030-31, all at ordinary rates. Penalty-rate income on community access rosters falls by $237 million a year by 2030-31, from $401 million; the shift accounts for $30 million of that and lost hours for the rest. Workers who stay on the exposed book lose 32.6 percent of their hours and 34.0 percent of their pay. At 22.7 hours a week, penalty rates were a large part of what made those rosters pay a living.
About 50,000 workers leave the sector each year, so most of the reduction can be absorbed by not replacing them. Some positions will go where services close, and most of the change will show up as fewer shifts. By 2030-31 the average remaining worker has lost close to a fifth of their hours.
The sector's largest single-year fall is 2028-29, when attrition accelerates and conversion is already 95 percent phased in. High-exposure providers, where conversion dominates, peak a year earlier. In 2023 the NDIS Review estimated the scheme needed 128,000 more workers by June 2025; within about eighteen months the sector moves from recruitment drives to hiring freezes.
Every provider loses a quarter of its workforce by 2030-31 through participant attrition alone. Each ten points of revenue in the exposed line adds about 2.5 FTE lost per hundred.
The 98 providers with more than half their revenue in community access average seventy percent exposure and lose about forty percent of their direct workforce by 2029-30. Sixty-three of them are charities, mostly running day programs, so the deepest cuts will be announced by not-for-profit boards whose main problem was their revenue mix.
Corporate overhead is 13 percent of revenue and 70 percent of it is fixed in the short run. As providers resize it to their remaining revenue, about 3,300 back-office roles go, a fifth of the total, mostly in the back half of the window.
A median-shaped provider, $20 million of revenue at 23 percent exposure, ends the window about 30 percent smaller in people. Three quarters of that is participant attrition, just under a fifth is group conversion, and the rest is corporate right-sizing. The board controls the pace of conversion and the timing of the restructure.
Track the conversion calendar against plan rollover dates, the fill rate of every recurring group by day of week, and the date your cumulative revenue decline crosses your overhead tolerance. That last date sets when the corporate restructure arrives.
Our operational retainer tracks your conversion calendar, the fill rate of every recurring group by day of week, attrition in your own participant book, and the date your revenue decline crosses your overhead tolerance, which sets the timing of your corporate restructure.
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