The Australian Bureau of Statistics has found that 25% of part-time workers want more hours, against an agency finding that promotes part-time work.
According to an Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report, over a quarter of part-time workers (27%) aged 15-24 years want to work more hours,.
ABS director of labour force and supplementary surveys Cassandra Gligora said the survey found there were many Australians working part time who would like to find full-time employment.
“Of the 824,100 part-time workers who would prefer more hours, over half (55 per cent) would prefer to work full-time.”
“While more women were employed part time, a higher proportion of male part-time workers were underemployed (28 per cent compared with 19 per cent of women). The greatest difference was reported for those aged 35-44 years (42 per cent for men and 17 per cent for women).”
“The Underemployed Workers Survey collected information in September 2012 about underemployed workers aged 15 years and over. The survey included information on the number of hours they usually worked, number of preferred hours, steps taken to find work with more hours and difficulties finding work with more hours,” Ms Gligora said.
Temporary transport and logistics jobs to grow
Against this backdrop, the Adecco Group 2013 Temporary Labour Report has found that the transport and logistics sector will continue to expand with temporary jobs, in a sector experiencing a growth of 7.5 per cent over the last four years. It is expected to grow by 5.2 per cent over the next five years.
The use of temporary workers now accounts for 33,700 jobs, or 6 per cent, of all transport and logistics roles in Australia.
With the temporary workforce expected to break 500,000 by 2015, the Australian & New Zealand (ANZ) chief executive of Adecco is urging policy makers to overhaul Australia’s antiquated industrial relations framework to better meet the needs of a rapidly changing, increasingly diverse workplace.
Adecco’s ANZ chief executive Jeff Doyle said: “We have had a 2 per cent growth in temporary labour in 2012, and with almost 30 per cent of Australians now working in part-time roles, our 20th century industrial relations framework does not reflect this shift to a more flexible workforce.
“We are in a situation where we’ve got young kids struggling to find a job to the other extreme of older Australians wanting to work – but not 9 to 5, five days week – so we can’t ignore the need for a more flexible industrial relations framework any more,” Mr Doyle said.
“And interestingly, the Adecco report found professional and management roles experienced the largest increases in temporary engagement in 2012 with a rise of over 30 per cent, contradicting the assumption that temporary labour is primarily used in unskilled labour sectors,” he added.
The use of temporary labour has grown across almost all industries in the last four years. In addition to the 7.5 per cent growth in transport and logistics, mining and resources topped the list with 91.7 per cent, followed by energy and utilities with 51.1 per cent, engineering and technical (29.5 per cent), sales and marketing (21 per cent), government (13.7 per cent), accounting and finance (9.2 per cent), trades (8.5 per cent), banking and financial services (5.6 per cent), office support (5 per cent) and manufacturing and operations with 0.6 per cent growth. Contact centres were the only sector to experience a decline with a drop of 2.5 per cent.
The 2013 Temporary Labour Report also found that over half of the organisations surveyed (53.6 per cent) expected to hire temporary employees in 2013.
“Equally, the continued rise in temporary labour reflects the need for Australian companies to have flexibility to address the skills shortage that continues to be a significant issue, with our report identifying 86 per cent of organisations surveyed expect to face a skills shortage in 2013,” Mr Doyle said.
“Over the last few years, temporary labour is proving itself as the key factor in sustaining a competitive and robust marketplace in Australia. Giving companies the ability to manage resource fluctuations, expand easily and increase workforce participation across society, can often mean the difference between offering a temporary job and not offering a job at all in this environment of subdued business confidence.
“Temporary labour also helps to reduce the pool of under-utilised developed talent in this country by giving older professionals, carers and students the opportunity to participate in the workforce in a way that suits them.
“And the total youth unemployment rate for Australian’s aged 15 to 19 is 17 per cent,” Mr Doyle said. “While many of these teenagers are still in education, a part-time or casual seasonal job will give them their first employment experience and may lead to their first role after school or college.
“It is essential that businesses can hire these teenagers easily so we can increase the employability of our youth by building their workplace skills and experience while addressing our very real skills shortage at the same time,” Mr Doyle added.
One third of temporary workers who contributed to the report intend to stay in their roles for over 2 years and the most popular reasons for choosing temporary labour are as a stepping stone to full-time employment (30.5 per cent), hard to find a permanent role (24.3 per cent), and because they like the flexibility (20.2 per cent).