Part-time Job Creation: An Option for Australia?
Australia's two major public sector job creation schemes in the 1980s—the Wage Pause Program and the Community Employment Program—have been primarily intended to provide full-time employment. This emphasis parallels that found in most other OECD countries. However, recently Great Britain, Sweden and France have pioneered large-scale part-time job creation schemes. In this paper several possible benefits from an increased emphasis on part-time job creation in Australia are reviewed, especially with reference to the information obtained during the evaluation of the Wage Pause Program. These benefits include increasing the number of job slots provided for a given net cost, improving training provisions, and assisting community sponsors with limited administrative resources. The implications of part-time arrangements, such as those developed overseas, for job creation in Australia are explored.