Page 506 - Week 02 - Thursday, 11 February 2021
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Since 1978, part-time jobs have replaced full-time jobs for women, and the 2016 census showed that at least seven per cent of ACT women in the labour force were not able to find enough hours of paid work to meet their needs. Women are more likely than men to be underemployed in industries with lower hourly pay rates and a greater proportion of part-time workers.
There was a significant shift towards underemployment and part-time work for women as a result of the 1990s recession, and underemployment has not been higher than unemployment for women in the ACT since September 1991. The same thing happened to ACT men’s underemployment compared to unemployment in November 2019, reflecting a permanent shift in the nature of paid work across Australia.
These changes to paid work have a long-term impact on poverty for older Canberrans, through the effect on superannuation. So 10 per cent of nothing is—let me do the maths here—nothing into nothing, carry the nothing. You can see how older people who are paying private market rent, especially women, are at increasing risk of homelessness.
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the ACT, underemployment as a proportion of the labour force increased from 5.4 per cent in March to 8.4 per cent in April for men and from 5.6 per cent to 9.5 per cent for women. But unemployment rates for ACT men and women barely changed over the same period. This is because the jobs most impacted by the economic effects of COVID-19 were in hospitality, retail, tourism and the arts, where there are high proportions of workers on low hourly pay rates, working casually or part time. These industries also employ high proportions of young people, which is why young people experienced the highest rates of job loss or hours cut.
But job creation programs implemented by the ACT government to mitigate these labour force effects are working. Over the course of 2020, underutilisation rates for women in the ACT labour force dropped compared to 2019, and underemployment stabilised back to levels similar to 2019. Unemployment rates for ACT men returned to levels similar to 2019, while underemployment reduced after having risen so significantly in April 2020.
As you can see, our access to and understanding of the context of data on poverty in the ACT is much more sophisticated than it was in 1999. I have not even started on housing affordability data, but only because I am told there are time limits for these speeches.
Reports from ACT community organisations such as ACT Shelter, the Women’s Centre for Health Matters, and the ACT Council of Social Service highlight the causes of poverty and recommend solutions. Instead of requiring these organisations to contribute more time and energy on further reports, I implore Ms Lee and her colleagues to familiarise themselves with the evidence and read and re-read existing reports. These reports can guide and help us to get on with what needs to be done. Ignoring this existing wealth of knowledge would be careless for an Assembly that takes the elimination of poverty seriously.
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