No. Every employer already knows that references are available on request, because asking for them is a step they control, not one you offer. The line gives the reader nothing, and it occupies a row of the page that could hold a fact about your work. Leave it off, keep your referees ready separately, and give their details when the process asks for them.
What the line is actually saying
Read literally, “references available on request” tells the employer that if they ask you for references, you will provide some. Nobody reading a CV doubted this. A candidate who refused to supply references when asked would be the strange case, and the line does not rule that out either, since anyone can type it.
It persists because it was on the template, and because it feels like a polite way to end the page. Neither is a reason. It is one of the CV rules that is pure folklore: repeated because it was repeated, never because anyone found it did something.
When references are actually asked for
This is the part candidates tend to get wrong, and it decides the question. References are almost never part of the screening stage. A person working through a pile of applications is deciding who to speak to, and at that point a referee’s name is of no use to them: they are not going to call anyone about a candidate they have not met.
References come in later, typically after an interview or at the point of an offer, and often as a condition of it. By then the employer has decided they want you and is checking that nothing contradicts what they have seen. They will ask for the details then, in a form or an email, with a clear request. Nothing on the CV speeds that up, and nothing on the CV slows it down.
So the line is offering, at the start of the process, something that is only ever wanted at the end of it, to a reader who was always going to ask.
What the line costs
Space, mostly. On a page where every line has to earn its place, a row that carries no information is a row that could have carried a result, a tool, a scope, or a date. It is a small cost, and it is a certain one.
There is a second, softer cost. A CV that ends with a stock phrase from a template reads, to a practised eye, like a CV built from a template, and the reader starts to wonder what else on the page was filled in rather than written. That is unfair to people who wrote everything else carefully, which is exactly why it is worth not inviting.
Should you list the references themselves instead?
Usually no, and for better reasons than space.
Your referees did not agree to be on every application you send. Their names, employers and contact details end up on job boards, in applicant systems and in the inboxes of recruiters they have never heard of. That is their information, not yours to broadcast.
A referee can be contacted before you expected. If the details are on the CV, nothing stops someone calling early, before you have had a chance to tell your referee which role it is, what you said about your work, and what you would like them to emphasise. A referee reached cold gives a vaguer answer than one who was briefed, and a vague reference does not help you.
Listing them tells a current employer you are looking. If one of your referees is at the company you are still with, or talks to people who are, putting them on a document that travels widely is a risk you do not need to take at the application stage.
The exception is simple: when the application explicitly asks for referee details up front, give them. Some application forms do, and some fields and sectors ask routinely. Follow the form in front of you. The question here is about the CV you send when nobody asked, and the answer there is to leave them off.
What to do instead
Keep a separate reference sheet: two or three people, their current title and employer, how they know your work, and how they prefer to be contacted. Ask each of them before you use them, once, properly, rather than assuming. When a request comes in, send the sheet and tell each referee the role, the company, and the one or two things about your work that matter for it, so the call they get is one they are ready for.
That is the whole system. It takes an hour to set up and it means the one time references actually matter, yours are prepared, while the page you send out every day spends its space on the work itself.
The short version
Leave “references available on request” off. It tells the reader nothing they did not know, references are asked for at the end of a process rather than the start, and the row is better spent on a fact about your work. Do not list referees on the CV either, unless the form asks: keep them on a separate sheet, ask their permission once, and brief them when a real request arrives. (If you are wondering what happens to the CV itself after a process ends, what “we’ll keep your CV on file” means is the companion question.)
JobShaped builds your CV from the profile you keep, so the page is filled with the work you have actually done, and the line at the bottom is not a habit you have to remember to break.