The Sydney Morning Herald
20th November 2013
Australians in full-time work are doing more unpaid overtime than ever before, while the unemployed and those with a part-time job struggle to find enough to do, a new report shows.
It comes as separate federal government research shows that more than a third of the nation’s mothers with children under 15 are also not in paid employment – one of the lowest in the developed world.
The Australia Institute on Wednesday will release Hard to get a break?, a study looking at the long hours Australians are working, and the barriers to finding work for those who have lost their job.
The report finds that, while the country’s official unemployment rate is 5.7per cent, if those in a job who want more hours were factored in, this could rise far higher.
To be released as part of the institute’s annual Go Home on Time Day, the report finds the strength of Australia’s resources sector has masked the level of real unemployment.
And it finds that Australians are working seven hours a week of unpaid overtime, three hours more than the same study found in 2009. Half of the nation’s workers did not take all of their leave last year, the study finds, with those earning more than $80,000 a year less likely to take all their leave (almost half of the people surveyed for the study say they would choose a 4per cent pay rise over extra leave).
It also finds people aged over 45 are particularly at risk of being unemployed for long periods, with age discrimination a barrier to being hired. Among this group until recently was Loi Wong, who was hired three months ago as a guard for Unified Security.
The 61-year-old from Keysborough was out of work for more than four years, and found work only after joining a Brotherhood of St Laurence program last year.
Born in Vietnam, Mr Wong came to Australia in 1978 and worked in manufacturing, and then on the city’s tram and bus systems. In the late 1980s, he returned to study to improve his English, but never returned to a full-time job, working in casual positions.
Before he got his full-time security guard job in Dandenong South, Mr Wong said he had lost all confidence because so many employers had knocked him back. “I think because of my age they didn’t want me,” he said.
The Brotherhood of St Laurence’s Katrina Currie said the older a person was, the harder it was for them to get back into work. She said older women often fared better because they were more likely to work in growth areas such as health and social care.
But Ms Currie said older men who did not have transferable skills often struggled for years to find a job. They were “competing with 20-year-olds”, she said.
Meanwhile the Australian Institute of Family Studies, an agency within the Department of Social Services, will also release on Wednesday research showing Australia’s maternal employment rate of 62per cent is lower than many OECD countries. The report, based on responses from 2000 mothers, found most saying they were not working because caring for children was their priority.