A part-time “working” nation

No wonder so many young people are leaving the bush and flooding to the capital cities. The dearth of full-time work has forced them to take flight. The disappearance of full-time work from our regions has driven those who have remained into low-paid, casual and part-time positions, such as in call centres.

The credibility of the official unemployment rate is compounded by the statistical exclusion of an estimated 300,000 mature-aged, long-term unemployed workers that have been shifted onto the Disability Support Pension (DSP). One of the key changes that enabled this shift was the 1991 decision to take local labour market conditions into account when considering a disability claim by anybody aged 55 or over. Subsequently, the employment advisors whose job it is to help unemployed people find work (paid for by the Job Network, a program currently funded by the taxpayer to the tune of $1 billion per annum) have been relieved of their responsibility to some of their more difficult cases, as the over 55’s have been shaved off the unemployment rolls and shifted onto the DSP. Half the people now joining the DSP each year are recruited directly from the unemployment rolls where they have, on average, spent more than 12 months drawing unemployment benefits.

The one remaining undisclosed unemployed group is the “discouraged job seekers”: those jobless individuals who want to work, are ready to start within four weeks, yet who have given up actively looking. According to the most recent available figures, the ABS calculates that 80,000 “discouraged” unemployed are excluded from the official rate.

When 85 per cent of those classified as employed were full-time workers, as was the case in the mid-1970’s - the last time the official unemployment rate reached 5.1 per cent - such a measure of unemployment was appropriate. However, when someone working for only one hour per week is classified as “employed” and there are over 200,000 people working less than 10 hours per week but seeking additional hours, then new measures of labour market performance are desperately required. And when 1 million working Australians continue to struggle to pay for even the most basic services for their families - including over half a million who were unable to pay for their electricity or phone bills last year - it's time we reconsider what minimum benefits a job should bring.

Further labour market reforms are high on the Coalition Government's fourth term electoral agenda. Once the Coalition takes control of the Senate in July of this year, we can expect the labour market to become more “flexible” - and that the divide between the job rich and job poor will grow wider.

In the lead-up to the Senate changeover and beyond, it is critical that those citizens concerned by the growing evidence that all is not well in the Australian labour market - regardless of whether they come from the ranks of the Coalition, the Federal Opposition, the NGO community, industry or private individuals - call attention to these worrying trends and lobby the Federal Government for the implementation of the 2004 Senate Inquiry into Poverty’s recommendations, specifically:

• That the Federal Government introduce a national jobs strategy to promote permanent full-time employment opportunities and better targeted employment programs (Recommendation 1);
• That the Federal Government poverty proof the minimum wage by linking it to adequate standards of living (Recommendation 6); and
• That the Federal Government, in collaboration with State Governments encourage the expansion of labour-intensive private sector services in regional areas by improving education and training and other public infrastructure and/or providing tax concessions or other subsidies to encourage employers to relocate in regional areas (Recommendation 73).

The truth about the labour market is out there; the strategies for tackling its shortcomings have been well documented; the only remaining task is to ensure that our tax dollars are not directed towards lowering the official unemployment rate, but towards facilitating secure, full-time employment. After all, bad jobs are no substitute for good policy.