This year marks the sixteenth annual Go Home on Time Day (GHOTD), an initiative of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute, that shines a spotlight on the maldistribution of working hours and the scale of unpaid overtime worked by Australians. The Australian labour market has remained relatively strong over 2024 although interest

Organisations in Australia are using blood analysis as a means of screening future employees for ‘health risks’ that they allege may impact on their performance of work. Collecting sensitive information from blood analysis is restricted under Australia’s privacy laws. This is because the mishandling of this information can have a substantial detrimental impact on those

This report considers and challenges two common myths about self-employment.

This report provides an overview of workplace and job-related factors found to act as barriers to sustainable and inclusive employment for people in groups likely to experience labour market disadvantage. Key findings are that job quality, working arrangements, inclusivity and opportunity for participation at work all matter for inclusive and sustainable employment, along with individual and external systemic and structural barriers to work.

For the last generation macroeconomic policy in Australia has been based on the assumption that unemployment must be maintained at a certain minimum level in order to restrain wages and prevent an outbreak of accelerating inflation. Now, after six years of record-low wage growth – which weakened even further in the latest ABS wage statistics – it is time for that policy to be abandoned.

Australia’s Newstart benefit hasn’t been increased in real terms in a generation, and pressure is growing on the Commonwealth government to address this inequity and raise the rate. Even RBA Governor Philip Lowe has indicated that better Newstart benefits would stimulate consumer spending and support the economy.

The ABS has released what is likely the last quarterly GDP report before a Commonwealth election expected in May. Coalition leaders were hoping a strong report would underline their standard talking points about being the best “economic managers.”  But they were badly disappointed.

In the lead-up to the 2013 federal election, then-Opposition Leader Tony Abbott made a high-profile pledge that a Coalition government, if elected, would create 1 million new jobs over the next five years. Abbott was elected (although later ousted by his own party), and total employment in Australia did indeed grow by over 1 million positions between 2013 and 2018.  Current Prime Minister Scott Morrison hopes that this success can resuscitate his party’s flagging fortunes: he has pledged, if elected, to create even more jobs (1.25 million) over the next five years.

Public sector austerity has become a “policy fad” in Australia, at all levels of government. Its hallmarks are unnecessary public sector wage caps, outsourcing, downsizing, privatisation and the imposition of so-called “efficiency dividends” which allegedly drive productivity growth but in reality cut spending and reduce the quality of public services. These policies of austerity are