Unemployment and underemployment in Australia have been exacerbated by the current pandemic. There are groups who have been disproportionately affected, including women and people who don’t identify as men along with youth as well as people experiencing multiple barriers based on race, class, gender and ability. According to a Per Capita report, even two years ago, 40 per cent of people aged between 25 and 34 were in part-time, casual or fixed-term work and 290,000 people had dropped out of the labour market entirely.
What then, does the case for full employment look like? When I talk about full employment it is not the same as one hundred percent; that is simply unrealistic. It is about everyone having access to a meaningful job and pathways to a job that includes people with extra barriers to employment such as those in rural areas, people with a disability and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This is not just an economic question, but too of having access to a decent wage that allows all people to live a decent life.
In a recent paper looking at youth and employment, Per Capita argues for a youth guarantee under which every young person under 25 gets a place in employment, education or training. For this to be effective, the paper highlights four areas that would be a significant shift in public policy: publicly funded post-secondary education, study and training allowances that provide a living wage, increased demand for entry-level positions and employment services that direct young workers towards skills shortages.
Sometimes it too helps to look back in order to look forward. The post-World War II 1945 White Paper on Full Employment provides some guidance. It states: ‘…governments should accept the responsibility for stimulating spending on goods and services to the extent necessary to sustain full employment.’ Associate Professor David Lee recently highlighted too how full employment became a bipartisan policy from post-war through to the 1970s. He puts forward the idea of a post-COVID-19 agency modelled on the successful Department of Post-War Reconstruction that would focus on tax reform, welfare system reform, job creation strategy and revival of key industries such as tourism. I would add to this a focus on groups facing the greatest barriers to employment with a consultation process to best understand and meet their needs.
In considering which types of jobs should be created, Richard Denniss stated recently: ‘When we