Transitions from Casual Employment in Australia Report
Buddelmeyer and Wooden (2007)
The report ‘Transitions from Casual Employment in Australia’ was commissioned by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations as a part of its Social Policy Research Services 2005-09 Agreement with the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research.
The project was prompted by initial research which found that a significant proportion (43 per cent) of casual employees in 2001 had moved into non-casual jobs by 2003. The Melbourne Institute was asked to look more closely into casual employment transitions over the period 2001 to 2004.
The research found that despite the fact that casual employees are a more transient group, casual employment provides an important stepping stone to permanent employment for many Australians.
Main findings
- Casual employees are at greater risk of moving into unemployment and out of the labour force in any one year than non-casuals.
- Over the course of one year, around 28 per cent of all casual job holders will move into some form of non-casual employment.
- Casual workers are more likely to move to a non-casual job (23 per cent) than someone who is unemployed (16 per cent).
- Almost half of casual job holders (around 46 per cent) in 2001 were working in some form of non-casual employment by 2004.
- About 40 per cent of casual employees who make the transition to non-casual employment do so with their current employer.
- Rates of transition from casual employment into non-casual employment are higher among younger age groups (aged 15–24 years), than prime aged and mature aged employees.
- Rates of transition into non-casual employment are higher among men than women. For example, 52.8 per cent of men make the transition from casual to non-casual employment within three years compared with 40.9 per cent of women.
- Women who were unemployed are more likely to be permanently employed (2 to 6 per cent) the following year compared to women who were casually employed.
- Less than 2 per cent of casual workers in Australia felt ‘trapped’ in their jobs.
- Casual employment appears to be an important avenue for mature age workers to make the transition to full retirement. One in five employed persons in the age group 45 years and over described their current job as a transition job, and of those, over one third indicated that the transition was characterised by a change to casual or contract work.