Dr Evan Jones, retired professor of Political-Economy at the University of Sydney, has published an insightful commentary on recent debates regarding corporate profits, inflation and monetary policy. With permission we reprint his article here. It originally appeared in Counterpunch. The politics of inflation in Australia Consumer price inflation in Australia reached 6.8 % in the

Q & A audience member Amy Brown cited the Australia Institute’s profits research when she asked the panel of politicians when they’re going to “act on behalf” of the constituents who elected them, instead of on behalf of corporations.

The federal Liberals have rejected an invitation to attend a national jobs summit next month, labelling it a stunt.

Report proposes big changes to Australian economy including giving workers more clout to bargain for better pay

The Australian Council of Trade Unions has accused the Reserve Bank of deliberately laying the groundwork for a recession due to its “whatever it takes” attitude to bringing inflation back to target.

The ACTU has proposed a radical overhaul of the nation’s economic structures, pushing for a tax on businesses that profit from high inflation and price controls on some goods and services, while tasking the Reserve Bank with driving down unemployment.

A pandemic-era $1.6 billion injection in much-needed funding into the nation’s training system has dramatically increased headcount of people in vocational courses, a new report says, but left Australia’s pipeline of skills in disarray. Three in five new apprenticeships have gone to male-dominated trades while numbers training in feminised sectors, such as aged and disability

Interview Jim Stanford, Director of Centre for Future Work, The Australia Institute.

A surge in full-time employment over the past five months has raised optimism about the economy’s health, but is that positivity misplaced?

Former Reserve Bank boss Bernie Fraser has savaged the Fair Work Commission’s cuts to penalty rates and the Turnbull government’s company tax cuts, saying the measures will further entrench inequality but do little to produce jobs and growth.

Last weekend’s edition of The Saturday Paper featured an in-depth analysis by journalist Mike Seccombe, dissecting the Coalition government’s attempts to scapegoat welfare programs for Australia’s labour market and fiscal problems. The article included several statistics from the Centre for Future Work, as well as from our colleague Richard Denniss (Chief Economist at the Australia Institute).  With decent paid work increasingly hard to find, it’s no wonder the government targets income-support payments for working-age Australians: there are both political reasons (shifting blame) and a perverse economic logic (reinforcing the compulsion on desperate workers to accept any job, no matter how insecure or badly-paid) behind the government’s strategy.

Economist Jim Stanford, the director of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute, has calculated that as many as two-thirds of Australian workers are now regularly expected to put in some form of unpaid overtime.

In today’s chronically depressed labour market, workers will go to unprecedented lengths to find and keep a job — even agreeing to work for free!  ABC’s RN program Future Tense recently explored the rising prevalence of unpaid work in Australia’s economy, including staying at work after hours, taking your work home with you (such as e-mails that never stop), and unpaid internships.

Regardless of who wins the Federal election, the major issue facing Australians is the future of work.

A new report from the Australia Institute shows that on a range of measures, the performance under the current government has been worse than that under Gillard, write Greg Jericho.

Australia now has the lowest proportion of manufacturing jobs in the OECD, according to a new report by the Centre for Future Work.

The report says the decline isn’t inevitable and can be reversed; several of our global peers are expanding their manufacturing sectors.

As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promotes his innovation agenda on the election campaign trail, the report finds the sector that is most innovation-intensive has been allowed to wither.