Australian Labour Market

Improved Essays
z“Describe and account for recent trends in the Australian labour market!”

INTRODUCTION
The labour market (the market in which employers and employees interact to sell labour for wages) is a crucial part of an economy. For employees, it is crucial that the labour market provides them with their main source of income, and for the firms, their costs (and thus their profits) are also based on the labour market setting wages.

Australia has historically had a tradition of egalitarianism, and in their chase for equality and trying to ensure fair outcomes for all, Australia created protections to supposedly help everyone by ensuring high wages for workers and stopping employers from having too much power over their employees.

FAIR WORK ACT
Previously,
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Fair Work Act 2009 commences and replaces Workplace Relations Act 1996. This has 10 minimum National Employment Standards, covering such areas as minimum wage, protection from unfair dismissal, maximum weekly hours of work, leave, notice of termination and redundancy pay, &c.

TRADE UNIONS
Trade unions are groups which advocate for the rights of their members and try to get higher wages and better working conditions for them. They also affect other areas, such as working safety, organizational changes, and training. Although trade unions aim to assist their members with all of these areas, Australia, like many developed countries has seen a great decrease in percentage of workers involved in a trade union (from 35% to 18% for women and 43% to 18% for men from 1992 to 2011). See Figure 1. All the factors work together to reduce trade union membership:
Figure 1t, (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012) Australian Bureau of Statistics is henceforth known as
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In the 1960s, for example, the phrase “quit my job” took up only 0.000020% of all books, whereas by 2000, it had reached 4× that amount. This trend was also reflected in the phrase “quit my job”. See Figure 2s. XYFDSDF This general increase in job changes has led to uncertainty for employees in the work place. Job losses can be very disruptive, and are also more visible than job gains. They often take place all at once, as a firm downsizes or closes. This change has led to doubts in the labour market, which many view as quite weak, which in turn has caused interstate migration to where jobs are. Western Australia, for example, has seen the highest interstate immigration for decades recently, and Queensland the lowest. See figure

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