What Are the Main Changes Occuring in the Australian Labour Market? What Are the Main Causes of These Trands? What Effect Are These Changes Having on the Nature of Employment in the Australian Economy?
INTRODUCTION
This paper focuses on 3 current trends occurring in the Australian labour market, analysing their causes and effects. The chosen trends are structural unemployment, gender pay gap and skill shortage. The main causes of the first trend are increase demand for services and technological change, which have led us into a new era where highly skilled labour force is needed to operate more complex machineries and computer systems. The rapid technological change has caused structural unemployment, with workers willing to work but cannot because of their lack of required skills. The second trend, gender pay gap, illustrates how wide the pay gap between males and females is until today. The main causes of this current direction are the persisting stereotype of the male brad-winner, the feminisation of some particular industry and more importantly non-union collective agreement. The results of this general direction limit the potentials of the Australian national income and create a culture of discrimination. The third and last trend, skill shortage, is generated by cut in investment in skill development, difficulties in retaining the employees and variation of demand for labour. These phenomenons foster inefficiency and impossibility to produce at full employment of resources.
TREND 1: STRUCTURAL UNEMPLOYMENT
One of the major trends that can be noticed in the Australian labour market is the steady presence of structural unemployment. Most of the definitions found in the literature describes this phenomenon as strictly linked to technological change. The Essential Economics Encyclopedia (2004) defines structural unemployment as the hardest type of unemployment because it is caused by the structure changes in the economy rather than by changes in the business cycle (cyclical unemployment). The Australian economy has undergone an evolutionary process that brought significant changes to the core of its structure. In the 19th century, the
This paper focuses on 3 current trends occurring in the Australian labour market, analysing their causes and effects. The chosen trends are structural unemployment, gender pay gap and skill shortage. The main causes of the first trend are increase demand for services and technological change, which have led us into a new era where highly skilled labour force is needed to operate more complex machineries and computer systems. The rapid technological change has caused structural unemployment, with workers willing to work but cannot because of their lack of required skills. The second trend, gender pay gap, illustrates how wide the pay gap between males and females is until today. The main causes of this current direction are the persisting stereotype of the male brad-winner, the feminisation of some particular industry and more importantly non-union collective agreement. The results of this general direction limit the potentials of the Australian national income and create a culture of discrimination. The third and last trend, skill shortage, is generated by cut in investment in skill development, difficulties in retaining the employees and variation of demand for labour. These phenomenons foster inefficiency and impossibility to produce at full employment of resources.
TREND 1: STRUCTURAL UNEMPLOYMENT
One of the major trends that can be noticed in the Australian labour market is the steady presence of structural unemployment. Most of the definitions found in the literature describes this phenomenon as strictly linked to technological change. The Essential Economics Encyclopedia (2004) defines structural unemployment as the hardest type of unemployment because it is caused by the structure changes in the economy rather than by changes in the business cycle (cyclical unemployment). The Australian economy has undergone an evolutionary process that brought significant changes to the core of its structure. In the 19th century, the
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