Does casual employment provide a "stepping stone" to better work prospects?

Abstract

Australia has experienced strong economic growth since 1992 and the concomitant employment growth has resulted in generational low rates of unemployment. However, the strong job growth has been accompanied by two major trends which have raised questions about the quality of the expansion. First, full-time work has declined in relative terms. At the start of the last growth cycle (January 1992), full-time work constituted 77 per cent of all jobs (January 1992). By October 2008, this proportion had dropped to 72 per cent. Of the 3106 thousand jobs that have been created between January 1992 and October 2008, 42.3 per cent have been part-time (ABS, 2008a). Second, a rising proportion of the part-time jobs created are of a casual nature, the latter constituted 26 per cent of total employment in 2006 having risen from 20 per cent in 1992 (ABS, 2006)