Dimensions and Prevalence of Decent Work in Australia, Hesta, September 2024
Executive Summary
United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG8) focuses on decent work and economic growth. It promotes decent work for the benefits it provides to individuals, businesses, investors and the economy. At the business level, these benefits include improved productivity, strengthened organisational capability, increased innovation and reduced expenses.3 For large and diversified asset owners, decent work also has systemic benefits including supporting economic demand and productivity, reducing reliance on social security and alleviating pressure on public health systems.
But what is decent work, and how should it be defined and measured? This report proposes that decent work and precarious work exist on opposite ends of a spectrum and that decent work is multi-dimensional – consisting of dimensions of job security, work conditions, work stress and flexibility.
Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, the report tracks trends in decent work in Australia over time, how the dimensions of decent work have contributed to these trends, and how decent work varies by industry and demographics.
Following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), work in Australia became more precarious, reaching a peak in 2016, after which it began declining steadily. Since the start of the pandemic, job quality has improved across the majority of sectors and sociodemographic groups. Across the Australian economy, three dimensions of decent work have improved – in general, jobs have become more secure, with better conditions and flexibility. However, one dimension of decent work has declined, driven by an increase in work-related stress.
Yet while the overall trend since the pandemic has been toward improved job quality, the benefits of decent work have not been experienced equally. The youngest and oldest cohorts of workers, people with lower levels of education and women all report experiencing greater precarity than comparative groups.
From a gender perspective, women experience higher levels of precarity than men. While this gender gap has historically been attributed to the lower relative flexibility and work freedom women report experiencing in their jobs, a widening of the gap since the pandemic has resulted from an increase in work stress for women, along with greater work-life balance satisfaction of men.
From an age perspective, young people have consistently experienced greater precarity relative to other age groups. While older Australian employees used to experience the highest job quality less than 10 years ago, they now experience higher overall precarity than all age cohorts except young people.
