Why sub-minimum wages for disabled Australians persist

A policy apparatus designed in another era still lets employers pay some disabled workers as little as $3.31 an hour while the national minimum wage sits at $26.44.

The mechanism is a two-layer system. First, the Supported Employment Services Award sets a sub-minimum floor of $8.32 an hour for workers in Australian disability enterprises – the old sheltered workshops now rebranded. Second, the Supported Wage System lets employers in any workplace cut that further, down to a fraction of the award rate, if the worker's productivity is formally assessed as lower than peers.

About 17,000 people with significant disability work in these specialist enterprises. Most are part-time. Many have held the same job for years. For people with intellectual disability or Down syndrome who are in the NDIS, these firms are the dominant employment option.

The Disability Royal Commission, which ran from 2019 to 2023, documented persistent problems: power imbalances, poor conditions, and limited choice. The commission's final report flagged concerns about how little control workers have over their own schedules and tasks.

Only about 12% of NDIS participants with intellectual disability who are in the labour force hold a mainstream job at full award wages. For those with Down syndrome the figure is 7%. Those are July 2026 figures, more recent than the broader 2022 data.

The disability enterprises are supposed to function as a stepping stone to open employment. In practice, the numbers are stark. In 2022, just 4% of workers under 25 moved into another job within a year. For those 25 and older, 2%. More workers stopped paid work entirely than moved into mainstream roles.

Employment support services are split between the NDIS and the Inclusive Employment Australia program, formerly Disability Employment Services. Advocates and researchers say the system is fragmented, hard to access, and not held to a consistent quality standard.