The Temporary Agency Work Sector in Australia and Ireland: Modest, Growing and Under-recorded.

By John Burgess, Julia Connell and Roy Green

Temporary agency work has increased in relation to most other sectors in most countries. The growth reflects the internationalisation of the agency business which, arguably, has come about due to demands for an "on-call just-in-time" workforce.

While temporary agency work possesses several conceptual and empirical challenges for researchers, it also poses challenges for regulators. This paper considers some of these challenges concerning various definitions, classifications and measurement of temporary work while comparing the Australian and Irish experience. It is concluded that while agency work in Ireland and Australia is modest, it is growing, and the conceptual and empirical problems associated with its under-recording pose difficulties for the design and implementation of a regulatory code for this sector.

(Economic and Labour and Relations Review, vol. 15, no. 2, January 2005; 199-211)