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>From Fin Rev, at:
http://www.afr.com.au/content/981210/news/news6.html
Australia fails its youth with low-skilled part-time jobs
By Stephen Long
Australia is failing to create high-skilled jobs for young adults
-- despite rising educational attainment -- with a big shift
towards low-skilled work for men and women in their early 20s,
according to new research released yesterday.
One in four workers aged 20-24 are employed in the lowest-skilled
jobs and the proportion of young adults in low-skilled jobs has
grown significantly in the past five years, research by the
National Institute of Labour Studies (NILS) shows.
"Among young women, there has been a clear shift away from
advanced clerical, sales and service jobs towards jobs requiring
only elementary or intermediate skills," NILS acting deputy
director, Dr Adriana Vandenheuvel, told a Canberra conference
yesterday on the learning and work circumstances of young adults,
convened by the
Dusseldorp Skills Forum.
"Male adults are less likely to hold jobs as tradesmen in 1998,
but more likely to work in elementary clerical, sales or service
jobs or as labourers, Dr Vandenheuvel said. "It is very disturbing
that, while policy emphasises skills uptrading, the jobs available
for young people are increasingly of a low-skilled variety."
She cited ABS labour force figures showing a three percentage
point rise in the number of young adult workers in low-level
clerical, sales and service jobs compared to 1993, matched by
falls in higher-level and intermediate-level jobs in these
occupations.
One in three workers in their early 20s are employed by small
business -- a significant increase on five years ago, the NILS
study showed. This was disturbing as small businesses were far
less likely than big businesses to invest in staff training, Dr
Vandenheuvel said.
According to data presented at the conference by the Australian
Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training (ACIRRT),
the full-time job market for young adults has collapsed during the
past decade, with the proportion of workers aged 20 to 24 working
part-time more than doubling from 12.6 per cent to 26.9 per cent.
While this partly reflected the blending of work and education --
one in four young adults combine work with study, up 10 per cent
on a decade ago -- it also disguised high rates of
under-employment among young adults.
"A growing proportion of part-time work is involuntary," ACIRRT's
deputy director, Mr John Buchanan, said. "Young adults are the
single biggest group of people who are unhappy working part-time.
A lot . . . would go to full-time work if they could get it."
By contrast, 21 per cent of workers aged 20-24 worked longer than
standard hours and more than one in 10 of those want to work fewer
hours. "One in four of these workers either wants more hours or
less," Mr Buchanan said.
A paradox of low union membership but high levels of support for
unionism characterised young adult workers, ACIRRT found.
Although fewer than one in four workers aged 20-24 are union
members -- significantly below the national average -- more than
60 per cent of workers aged 18-24 polled by Newspoll last year
said that if free to choose, they would rather be in a union.
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end
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