Comments on: Part-time employment up. Flexibility matters.

By: Steve at the Pub

Steve at the Pub — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 00:13:15 +0000

My workplace exists on flexibility. If the Fair Work Act allowed more flexibility, and if not for a few other provisions of it, I’d have 2 to 3 more people on the payroll.

This isn’t including the 10 I got rid of via a restructure, in the lead up to the Act’s implementation, to reduce my exposure to the unfairness of the new unfair dismissal laws.

By: Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) B. — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:09:22 +0000

Isn’t there a commentator is Aust who can throw this back in his face?

Nope. Not in the MSM anyway.

They’re all rowing in the same boat there.

By: Le Chiffre

Le Chiffre — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:26:53 +0000

BTW a month ago Shorten was crowing how 800,000 jobs had been created in Australia in the last five years under Labor. Well with 200,000 jobs created annually by population increase alone; that means his so-called government has been responsible for the elimination of 200,000 jobs. Isn’t there a commentator is Aust who can throw this back in his face?

By: Le Chiffre

Le Chiffre — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:17:47 +0000

Another pile of garbage from the ABS.

For comparison purposes the Employment figures should be viewed on a Full Time Equivalent employment basis:
November:
Full Time FTE jobs lost -4,200
Part Time FTE jobs gained +6,950 ( 13,900/2 )
Total gain +2,750 FTE jobs

Population increase creates 200,000 new positions annually (work force of 11.5M with populatin growth at 1.7%). These new jobs are required to be created just to keep the unemployment rate steady. This gain of 3,000 odd FTE jobs in November represents a retardation of job creation of 14,000 positions in November. Not ‘surprisingly strong figures’.

Comon sense indicates that November is characterised by the largest increase in the participation rate of the year as school leavers and uni grads enter the job market for FT and PT work. For the ABS to make a seasonal adjustment that actually lowers the participation rate in November is ridiculous, thus the adjustment alone is responsible for the entire non-existent decrease in the unemployment rate – it is entirely erroneous.
Memo to Joe Hockey: fire the dumbass doing the seaonal adjustments at the ABS Labour Force team (remember they similarly screwed the figures in April with a supposed decrease in the rate to 4.9%).

Real rate: the trend unemployment rate is 5.3% (the ABS gets this right) and without a change in the participation rate it would be 5.4%, with an accurate November increase in the participation rate it is 5.5% – just as economists expected.

By: Oblique

Oblique — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 07:11:48 +0000

The real figures haven’t hit yet. For example, those looking for work from the 25,000+ public sector pool sacked by the Queensland government will not factor in those numbers. Because of redundancy payouts and contracts, most of these people are not “technically” unemployed, even though they might be looking for work. The reason they’re not counted is they can’t register as unemployed if they received a payout. This continues until the duration of the payout contract, some of them up to 3 years.

By: Harold

Harold — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 05:51:14 +0000

Germany's unemployment rate was 6.9 percent in November. Which by historical standards is low...

Unemployment for the [Euro] region as a whole is at a record high of 11.6 percent. By contrast, Germany’s jobless rate is still close to a two-decade low, helping to fuel household spending and temper the economic slowdown.

From a worker's perspective this is a better place to be than Germany?

By: blergh

blergh — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 05:23:44 +0000

Your headline has no basis in fact.

Part time work is not necessarily casual work.

Full time work is not necessarily ‘permanent’ work.

There is no way to know whether the net jobs growth reported in today’s Labour Force release for November represents an increase or a decrease in the proportion of the workforce that is employed on a casual arrangement.

It’s possible that the net loss of full-time jobs was entirely comprised of ‘full time casual positions’ and that the net additional part time jobs all had paid leave benefits. It’s possible that the opposite is true. There is no way to say.

By: Poor Old Rafe

Poor Old Rafe — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 05:17:35 +0000

A good point, I took it as casual employment (whatever he said) because of the time of year. I had better qualify the original post although the message is still the same – flexibility and productivity are the keys.

Callers were quickly on the line to remind us of all the indicators that are going south like the job ads, the cost of power, and confidence in the business community.

By: Skuter

Skuter — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 05:07:13 +0000

Didn’t catch Ross Greenwood talking about this, but do we know the data source? I am always a bit suspicious when people talk about casual employment because there is typically a lot of confusion between part-time and causal employment. One can be permanent part-time or casual full-time. Also casuals’ hours can vary from week to week or be relatively stable over time. What determines whether employment is casual is the eligibility for entitlements like annual leave, sick leave, etc. not weekly working hours. Casual employment is only recorded in infrequent ABS surveys whereas part-time/full-time data is available from the monthly labour force survey

By: stackja

stackja — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 05:06:40 +0000

Work Choices has been demonised.