Sorry about the litany of negative stories of late but it’s a bad patch. Don’t get me started on BHP and Olympic Dam! As a resume writer and job specialist, the rise in part time work replacing full time work is a major issue. You can’t get a mortgage with part time or casual work.

Across Australia, the so-called ‘economic recovery’ is all about part-time and casual work – full-time work remains at record lows.

Even so, apart from Victoria, the states have recovered around 75% of the work hours lost due to the pandemic. Victoria has not recovered at all.

The hours worked were falling before the virus hit.

I wrote this story about under employment in South Australia in 2018. The situation is much worse now.

Nationally, the most recent peak was at the start of 2019, when all Australian adults were working on average 87.2 hours a month. It’s now at 80.9 hours.

More people in Australia worked part-time in September than ever done before.

In this recession, unlike previously, women’s full time work has been hit just as hard as men’s.

After March, women’s full-time work (excluding Victoria) fell 6.1% compared with 4.1% for men.

In September, the figure for women had recovered to be down 3.3% on March levels, while men’s had barely improved – still down 3.8%.

Full-time workers have become a source of underemployment.

Normally the biggest reasons for being underemployed are that you work part-time or full-time but you would just prefer more hours.

Since March, however, the number of workers in those categories have either stayed the same or fallen, while the percentage of workers who usually work full-time but are working part-time due to economic reasons has doubled.

There’s a massive shift from full time to part time work.