A Part-time 'Working' Nation

By Tim Martyn

While Australia enjoys its lowest official unemployment rate in 28 years, it's time to reflect upon the true level of labour-market exclusion and prospects for the unemployed and working poor.

Full-time employees are spending longer at work, unemployment figures look low partly because of the counting methods that put those with very low hours in the category of employed, so that the numbers underemployed have increased threefold in the past two decades. Regional Australia is hollowing out as only casual jobs remain, people head to the larger towns or cities, and call centres and others relocate to take advantage of greenfield, low paid sits or leave the country altogether.

The Senate Poverty Inquiry urged government to introduce an national jobs strategy to create more full time employment and that the government poverty proof the minimum wage. As the federal government seems intent on doing the opposite and not addressing skills shortages, infrastructure needs, when the truth about the failure of labour markets is staring it in the face, all others concerned with decent wok and conditions, and a decent society, need to act.

(Eureka Street; April 2005, pp20-1