The growth of part-time and casual employment in Australia, and elsewhere, in the last few decades has been well documented. In Australia, the percentage of employed persons who work part-time has increased by approximately five percentage points per decade, from 10 percent in 1970 to 25 percent by 2000 (ABS, 6203.0). In 1982 approximately 11 percent of Australian employees were employed as casual workers. This had risen to 27 percent by 2000 (ABS, 6310.0). Although about two-thirds of casual employees work part-time and about two-thirds of part-time employees are casual, the proportion of full-time workers who are employed on a casual basis has almost doubled in the last decade to reach 12 percent in 2000(ABS, 6310.0).
The increasing prominence of "nontraditional" employment has raised concern both in the population at large and among economists. It has been suggested that part-time employment has been seen as an indication that the economy cannot provide enough full-time jobs (Robertson, 1989: 395). It is claimed that the lack of full-time job growth is the source of our most important and economic and social problems (Gregory, 2002: 271). This essay investigates the claim that the key labour market problems are the lack of full-time job growth and the rapid growth of all welfare recipients. It will also show that unemployment is just a small part of the structural problem within the Australian economy. .
At the beginning of the last decade the most common policy suggestion to create more full-time jobs was to deregulate the labour market (Gregory, 2002: 274). It was argued that this would create real wage falls for those groups with limited full-time job opportunities (Gregory, 2002: 275) However, this was not necessarily the case as Henman (2001) suggests, gradual labour market deregulation has also led to a growth of part-time and casual employment, and a reduction in full-time work.