The Australian labour market has been characterised over the last 12 to 24 months by the dominance of part-time employment creation with full-time employment contracting. Over the last 12 months, Australia has produced only 84.9 thousand (net) jobs with 107.2 thousand of them being part-time jobs. In other words, full-time employment has fallen by 22.2 thousand jobs over the same period. This status as the nation of part-time employment growth carries many attendant negative consequences – poor income growth, precarious work, lack of skill development to name just a few disadvantages. Further, underemployment has escalated since the early 1990s and now standard at 8.3 per cent of the labour force. On average, the underemployed part-time workers desire around 14.5 extra hours of work per week.
If we look at the US labour force survey data quite a different picture emerges, which is interesting in itself. Does this suggest that the US labour market has been delivering superior outcomes. In one sense, the answer is yes. But recent research based on non-labour force survey data (private sampling) suggests otherwise. That research finds that “all of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements.” That is, non-standard jobs have disappeared and are being replaced by more precarious, contract and other types of alternative working arrangements. The trend in the US has not been driven by supply-side factors (such as worker preference) but reflects a deficiency in overall spending. Not a good message at all.Deconstructing the narrative that the US economy has returned to or is closely approaching "full employment."
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All net jobs in US since 2005 have been non-standard
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
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