CONCERNS ABOUT FUTURE

UNDEREMPLOYED Australians are not just struggling to pay the bills, but are having trouble securing home loans and are deferring starting families.

While unemployment may be under control at about 5.4 per cent nationally, underemployment is sitting at about 8.4 per cent, having not fallen below 5.9 per cent since the early 1990s.

Almost a million Australians worked casually or part-time in 2017 and wanted – or needed – more hours than they were being given, the Australian Bureau of Statistics-reveals.

This was almost 100,000 more than four years earlier.

Of Australia’s underemployed workers, women (63 per cent), people caring for their own children (33 per cent), young people aged 18 to 24 (24 per cent) and workers in the community and personal services industry (22 per cent) were disproportionately represented.

David Chalke, social analyst and principal of The Strategy Planning Group, says the trend is having both financial and social effects.

“If you haven’t got a stable income and you are getting credit with banks, you will end up paying premium rates,” he says.

“A combination of underemployment and other social factors has changed the age of people coupling (and starting families). “There is a deferment.

“If you are not feeling financially secure you don’t want to run the risk of losing one income if one of the partners needs to mind the kids.”

Chalke says Australians have rising concerns about their financial future and this is affecting mental wellbeing, too.

“The economic equation is easy to see but it’s the emotional equation that is much harder because people gain so much satisfaction, reward and sustenance from work and you can’t replace that easily,” he says.

“You can’t just bump up welfare to replace that.”