A report released yesterday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare titled, “Australia’s
Welfare 2019”, shows the key trends in Australia’s social support, housing, education, and employment.
Australia spends about 10.9% of its GDP on welfare putting it below the OECD median.
Finland and other European countries spend much more on welfare than do countries like
the UK, Australia, the United States, and Canada.
Unemployment in Australia has stayed relatively stable hovering around the 5 to 6% mark over
the last decade.
It’s currently sitting at 5.2%.
Remember, however, that employment is defined as having only worked one hour a week or more
(so you could be earning as little as $19.49 a week and still be classified as ‘employed’).
And to be considered unemployed, you must be actively looking for work.
So if you’ve given up looking for work, guess what, you’re not unemployed.
The rate of long-term unemployment has increased from 15% in 2009 to 25% in 2018.
So one in four unemployed people have been looking for work for more than a year without
success.
That is, they can’t even find one hour of work per week.
However, if we look at underemployment, we can see that the rates are significantly higher
and have been steadily trending upwards over the last decade.
If you combine both unemployment and underemployment, we have almost 14%
of the Australian labour force not being able to find enough work.
Remembering that people who have given up looking for work don’t count.
The number of people in part-time employment has risen from 28% in 2008 to 31% in 2018.
The number of people in apprenticeships is falling, from about 336,000 in 2014 to 267,000
last year.
The rate of females participating in apprenticeships is also falling.
The rate of old people on the disability support pension or carer payment has increased rather
dramatically from 0.2% in 2001 to 3% in 2018.
Taking into account inflation, the government is actually spending a lot more on welfare
per person than it once did.
Consequently, the number of people working in welfare has also been steadily increasing.
When it comes to home ownership, young people are losing out.
The rate of home ownership for 25 to 29-year-olds has plummeted from 50% in 1971 to 37%.
For 30 to 34-year-olds, it’s fallen from 64% to 50%.
Unsurprisingly, the number of people renting has increased for all age categories with
more and more people renting for life.
The proportion of households spending more than half their income on housing is growing,
while the proportion of people spending less than 25% is shrinking.
Simply existing in Australia is becoming increasingly more expensive.
Due to rising underemployment and a lack of affordable housing, Australia is also facing
a loneliness epidemic.
One in four Australians are currently lonely, with one in two Australians feeling lonely
at least one day a week.
Loneliness has been linked to premature death, poor physical and mental health, and general
dissatisfaction with life.
Four in five people entering prison are male.
Two in five are Indigenous.
Two thirds are under 40.
Three quarters have been to prison before, and half are unemployed.
Unemployment leads to crime and vice-versa.
Despite the rising underemployment issue, it turns out overemployment has also become
an issue and may just be the reason why wages have stagnated.
The wage price index experienced record lows before rising barely above rising living costs.
The Australia Institute conducted research that shows Australians are owed about $106
billion in overtime.
The average worker puts in six hours of unpaid overtime per week, which equates to working
an extra two months for free every year, and this trend is increasing.
Workplace expert, Conrad Liveris, had these words to say,
“It's basically two different sides of the stress coin.
There's people who are desperate for more hours at work, and there are people who are
struggling to even keep a semblance of a life.
You're either running around stressed about paying your bills, or you're losing your relationships
with people around you — and the only life you have is that of work.
Both of them are incredibly sad and frustrated, and you know they're basically linked.”
Professor John Buchanan at the University of Sydney Business School spoke of the ongoing
work hours issue in Australia.
He said,
“People are starting to wake-up, we do have a serious working time problem.
We work amongst the longest hours, we've got amongst the highest proportion of part-time
workers, and amongst many of those part-timers they want to work more hours.
Hours of work started to get out of control in the 1980s and it's been locked in now in
enterprise agreements and weakly-regulated parts of the labour market.
You now have many workers not having enough hours, and those who do have work — full-timers
— working amongst the longest hours in the world.”
Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sally McManus, spoke of the rising
issue of wage theft.
She said,
“If you feel as though you can't say no to your employer and you have to work those
extra hours, often unpaid, so it's really a form of wage theft, or job theft.
You're going to work those hours in order to keep your job, and that's a problem.
It's not their fault as individuals.
They're in a position where often they're put under pressure to work those extra hours
for free.
And so employers, if they think they can get people who work all those hours for free,
why would they employ someone they have to pay?”
What are your thoughts?
Is Australia facing an underemployment and an overemployment crisis simultaneously?
What can be done about it?
Are employers getting away with too much, or are they under pressure as well to complete
in this increasingly globalised world?