Youth underemployment was exacerbated by the pandemic but was not a new crisis for younger Australians, research suggests.
Young people bore the brunt of recent economic disruptions like the global financial crisis and recessions in the late twentieth century, so job losses during the pandemic speak to deeper structural issues, according to a study from the University of Melbourne and University of Newcastle.
The study argues the casualisation and insecure nature of work has been normalised over previous decades with major consequences.
“While the pandemic was experienced as a shock or sudden crisis by many, its impact on the employment of some young adults represented a continuation of existing patterns of insecure employment and precarity rather than a new crisis,” the authors wrote.
Australia’s youth unemployment rate as of February 2023 was 7.9 per cent, more than double the national rate of 3.5 per cent.
In 2020, young people were more likely to be on casual contracts than older workers in industries heavily impacted by lockdown measures such as retail, hospitality or tourism.
Researchers say the reasons behind this trend need to be examined.
“What you have is a greater proportion of creation of jobs that are part time, casual or fixed term, that means not permanent,” lead author Professor Hernan Cuervo told AAP.
“This generates, for example, in people that are entering the labour market like young people a greater possibility to have horizontal mobility in terms of employment … but not vertical mobility, that sense of going up the social or employment ladder.”
The findings were based off a survey of 470 people aged in their early thirties taking part in the Life Patterns study in 2021.
Almost a third of those who responded said their financial position was negatively impacted by the pandemic.
About the same number said their employment and financial wellbeing was not affected while one in ten believed they benefited financially through the pandemic because they were able to save.
That group included people in insecure work who were eligible for government programs like JobKeeper and had more flexible income to spend on essentials such as groceries and bills.
“Of course, once this supplementary income support from the government (through) coronavirus went away they returned to the struggles of being unemployed and in poverty, which basically shows that the unemployment benefit has to be raised in Australia,” Prof Cuervo said.
Many participants on casual or on fixed contracts did not identify as being in insecure employment, even though the authors deemed them to be.
“The normalisation of this state is perhaps the clearest indication that it has been a reality that has far pre-dated the pandemic for some of our participants,” the study authors said.
© AAP 2023
