Australia / Some work too much while other not enough

Australians in full-time work are doing more unpaid overtime than ever, while the unemployed and those with a part-time job struggle to find enough to do, a new report shows.

It comes as separate federal government research shows that more than a third of the nation’s mothers with children under 15 are not in paid employment – one of the lowest levels in the developed world.

The Australia Institute will on Wednesday release Hard to get a break?, a study looking at the long hours Australians are working, and the barriers to finding work for those who have lost their job.

The report finds that while the country’s official unemployment rate is 5.7 per cent, if those in a job who want more hours were factored in this could rise far higher.

To be released as part of the institute’s annual ”Go Home on Time Day”, the report finds the strength of Australia’s resources sector has masked the level of real unemployment.

And it finds that Australians are working seven hours a week of unpaid overtime, three hours more than the same study found in 2009. Half of the nation’s workers did not take all of their leave last year, the study finds, with those earning more than $80,000 a year less likely to take all their leave (almost half of the people surveyed for the study say they would chose a 4 per cent pay rise over extra leave).

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Jobs: Unemployed struggle to find work, full-timers work excessive unpaid overtime.