My Blog

Author: Jim Stanford

  • The Future of Work in Journalism

    The new report, The Future of Work in Journalism, was written by Dr. Jim Stanford with the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute. It catalogues the employment and economic damage wrought in media and information industries by the combination of technological change, new business models, and globalisation.

    “It is ironic that we supposedly live in an ‘information economy,’ but Australia’s capacity to contribute fully and successfully to that information era is crumbling due to financial losses and massive job destruction,” Stanford said.

    Major findings of the report include:

    • The broader information, media, and telecommunications industry lost over 30,000 jobs between 2007 (its peak employment) and 2019. Publishing was the worst-affected sub-sector, losing over half of its jobs as newspapers and other print media grappled with new technologies and major losses.
    • New jobs in digital activities (such as internet publishing) are not offsetting the loss of work in conventional media.
    • Jobs remaining in the media industry have become more insecure: with almost one-third part-time, and a growing share casual and contractor positions.
    • Real wages are falling in the media industry, despite a dramatic increase in labour productivity. Real value-added per employee in media industries has been growing at 4% per year since 2012, but real labour compensation has been falling.

    “Workers in these industries are producing more with less, despite the turmoil of technological change, job losses, and restructuring,” Stanford said. “But that extraordinary effort is not translating into more secure or better paid jobs – quite the contrary.”

    The report argues that quality journalism is a ‘public good’ in a modern democracy, because of its importance in distributing reliable information (including on emergencies, like the pandemic) to citizens. The failure of private markets to sustainably supply this service (due to corporate concentration, unrestrained ‘free riding’ on content produced by other, and globalisation) necessitates public policy action to stabilise the industry and support continued journalism.

    The report makes several suggestions for policy measures to sustain journalism despite those market failures, including publicly-funded journalism, stronger property rights for content-creators, tax reforms, stronger anti-trust regulations (on major digital monopolies like Google and Facebook), and stronger support for training and vocational education in the sector.

    The report was commissioned by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union representing journalists and other media workers. Marcus Strom, the MEAA’s Media Federal President, said: “The report makes it clear that years of disruption, undermining and neglect have left Australian journalism and journalists in a fragile state.”

    Strom urged the Commonwealth government to step up its support for domestic journalism. ““Public interest journalism is a public good. It informs and entertains Australians, ensures the public’s right to know and holds the powerful to account. If we want that to continue, then there is no time to waste to address the many challenges facing those working in journalism and the entire media industry.”

    The post The Future of Work in Journalism appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Shock Troops of the Pandemic: Casual and Insecure Work in COVID

    New research confirms that workers in casual and insecure jobs have borne the lion’s share of job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic – both the first lockdowns in 2020, and the more recent second wave of closures.

    Since May, workers in casual and part-time jobs have suffered over 70% of job losses from renewed lockdowns and workplace closures. Casual workers have been 8 times more likely to lose work than permanent staff. And part-timers have been 4.5 times more likely to lose work than full-timers.

    “Workers in insecure jobs have been the shock troops of the pandemic,” said Jim Stanford, Economist with the Centre for Future Work and author of the report. “They suffered by far the deepest casualties during the first round of layoffs. Then they were sent back into battle, as the economy temporarily recovered. But now their livelihoods are being shot down again, in mass numbers.”

    The post Shock Troops of the Pandemic appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Submission: Senate Inquiry into Australian Manufacturing Industry

    Submission advocating for active industrial policy for manufacturing.

    Authors: Stanford, Nahum

    Download the full report.

  • Post-COVID-19 policy responses to climate change: beyond capitalism?

    As Australia moves further away from anything resembling a sustainable pathway to reach these goals (i.e., $90bn submarines that we will not see for at least 20 years but no meaningful action on climate change), a new Labour and Industry article – co-authored by Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow Mark Dean and Centre for Future Work Associate, Professor Al Rainnie analyses four alternative responses proposed by Australian unions, climate change groups and grassroots community organisations.

    The purpose of this article has been to identify the range of options that government is capable of pursuing and which, with sensible political choices, can adopt as strategy today. Absent the current federal government’s political will to make long-term choices, Australia is yet to settle on a coordinated policy response that plans and directs the sustainable development of our economy.

    Urgent action is needed to shape policymaking with a strategic, long-term vision that restores the active, interventionist role of government in building an economy capable of overcoming crisis.

    The post Post-COVID-19 policy responses to climate change: beyond capitalism? appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • An Avoidable Catastrophe: Pandemic Job Losses in Higher Education

    Now, 18 months after the borders were first closed, things are getting worse for universities, not better. New research from the Centre for Future Work confirms that tertiary education has been hit by bigger job losses this year than any other non-agricultural sector in the economy.

    The new report, An Avoidable Catastrophe: Pandemic Job Losses in Higher Education and their Consequences, was prepared by Eliza Littleton and Jim Stanford. It shows that total employment in tertiary education in the first half of 2021 fell by 40,000 positions compared to year-earlier levels. Most of the job losses were permanent, full-time positions — and all of them were at public institutions.

    During the first months of the pandemic, casual staff were the first university employees to lose their jobs as universities grappled with the sudden loss of international student fees and other impacts of the pandemic. This year, however, the job losses are both much larger, and targeted at permanent full-time staff. This indicates that universities are undertaking a more permanent downsizing and casualisation of their workforce, on expectation that border closures are likely to persist — and the Commonwealth government will continue to refuse targeted assistance necessary to preserve the universities’ instruction and research capacities.

    The report urges the Commonwealth government to provide special temporary assistance to universities until borders can reopen and revenues return to normal. Targeted support of $3.75 billion would allow the universities to replace and preserve the jobs cut so far this year. Preserving the functions of Australian universities is especially vital at a moment when the economy is undergoing lasting structural changes as a consequence of the pandemic, and hence more students will need higher education opportunities to support the resulting employment transitions. Moreover, the pandemic also reinforced that the need for top-quality research (including in health sciences) is more urgent than ever.

    The post An Avoidable Catastrophe appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Creativity in Crisis: Rebooting Arts and Entertainment After COVID

    Culture is an inescapable part of what it means to be human. We can no more imagine a life without the arts than we can imagine a life without language, custom, or ritual. Australia is home to the oldest continuing cultural traditions on the planet, and some of the world’s most renowned actors, musicians and artists. But while we have a proud story to tell, the future of Australian culture looks increasingly uncertain.

    New research from the Centre for Future Work, by Senior Economist Alison Pennington and Monash University’s Ben Eltham, reveals the ongoing, devastating impact of COVID-19 on Australia’s arts and entertainment sector and provides a series of recommendations to government that would reboot the creative sector after the crisis.

    The post Creativity in Crisis: Rebooting Australia’s Arts and Entertainment Sector After COVID appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Family & Domestic Violence Leave Review (AM2021/55)

    Submission supporting paid family and domestic violence leave.

    Authors: Jim Stanford

    Download the full report.

  • Funding High-Quality Aged Care Services: A Summary

    The summary is based on a full 80-page research report, Funding Quality Aged Care Services, published in May and written by David Richardson and Jim Stanford.

    The summary report restates the key recommendations from the Royal Commission (including its emphasis on improving working conditions and job stability for aged care workers), highlights the ample fiscal capacity for the Commonwealth government to move ahead with implementing those recommendations, and then considers five specific revenue tools which could generate sufficient resources to pay for needed reforms. The most obvious (and perhaps fairest) would be for the Commonwealth government to cancel the planned ‘Stage 3’ elimination of the 37% personal income tax bracket: a move (already legislated) which would reduce revenues by at least $16 billion per year, but would deliver the vast majority of its ‘savings’ to the richest fifth of society. Surely, committing to the safe and respectful care of older Australians is a more important priority than further supplementing the take-home incomes of very well-off households.

    The post Funding High-Quality Aged Care Services: A Summary appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Industrial Policy-Making After COVID-19

    But since the 1990s, the ‘default’ economic and industry policy setting of government has ultimately been to favour resource extraction as our national strength. Even despite the growing threat of climate change and global economic crises that make a shift to ‘green’ industrial transformation a pathway pursued by many other nations, current Coalition government policy continues to reflect deliberate, calculated emphasis on the extraction and export of raw materials. Australia risks cementing its developing-world economic status if we do not consider important industry policy challenges.

    The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to opportunities for Australia to not only rebuild, but reconstruct our economy in a way that capitalises on our national manufacturing potential and their ability to contribute to a sustainable recovery from the economic and social crisis that has culminated in lockdowns and recession. The future development of Australia’s manufacturing industry must focus on the opportunities presented by renewable energy to drive innovation, industrial transformation and a green future shaped by a skilled manufacturing workforce.

    Researchers from the Centre for Future Work, Mark Dean, Al Rainnie (Centre for Future Work Associate), Jim Stanford and Dan Nahum, have co-authored a new scholarly paper which will be published in the academic journal, the Economic and Labour Relations Review and is currently available as an online-first publication at their website.

    The article analyses Australia’s opportunities to revitalise its strategically important manufacturing secor in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, considering Australia’s industry policy options with reference to both advances in the theory of industrial policy and recent policy proposals in the Australian context.

    To examine the prospects for the renewal of Australian manufacturing in a post-pandemic economy, the article draws on recent work from The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work – specifically, Dan Nahum’s research into manufacturing and sustainability in Powering Onwards and Jim Stanford’s research on post-COVID-19 manufacturing renewal and Australia’s record on robotics adoption, in synthesis with analyses from published and forthcoming research from Al Rainnie and Mark Dean relating to critical evaluations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its implications for the Australian economy.

    The aim of the article is to contribute to and further develop the debate about the future of government intervention in manufacturing and industry policy in Australia. Crucially, the argument links the future development of Australian manufacturing with a focus on renewable energy. The purpose of this article has been to interpret the decline of manufacturing in Australia over the last generation and to identify the core principles and policy levers that would facilitate a revitalisation of our domestic manufacturing capabilities. The paper considers the history of half-hearted attempts by Australian governments and industry to spark a recovery: these attempts have largely lacked any critical consideration of the structural factors that inhibit a full-scale transformation of Australian industry. Such a transformation would in fact require consistent and systematic policy settings.

    The Coalition government’s evolving policy framework – focused on tax cuts for high-income households and companies, subsidies for further fossil fuel use, and further interventions to weaken industrial relations practices – reflects its attempt to use the pandemic as an opportunity to reinforce its previous commitment to a business-dominated economic strategy. But Australia can, and must, do better than this. The article analyses the possibilities and the challenges of developing a new industrial policy that is informed by modern understandings of technology, sustainability and social cohesion.

    A modern, sustainable industry policy is not a catch-all solution to addressing climate change, economic crisis and pandemic recovery – but it does hold great potential to help redirect Australia’s lurch further towards the banana republic status first identified nearly forty years ago.

    You can access a pre-publication version of this article below and those with access can read the article publication on the Economic and Labour Relations Review website.

    The post Industrial Policy-Making After COVID-19: Manufacturing, Innovation and Sustainability appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Video: Myth & Reality About Technology, Skills & Jobs

    But what if technology isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? And what if you invest in learning the current hot coding language, only to see it replaced by something totally different as soon as you graduate?

    In this 30-minute video, Centre for Future Work Economist and Director Dr. Jim Stanford takes on several myths related to technology and jobs.

    He argues that technology is neither exogenous nor neutral: innovation reflects the priorities (and the power) of those who have the resources to pay for it. By some indicators, jobs are becoming less technology-intensive — and this is undermining job security and living standards. Finally, we need a more holistic and democratic approach to skills and training: one that respects the all-round interests of workers as human beings (not just ‘producers’), and accepts that skills alone are no guarantee of decent, fair jobs in the future.

    The video is an excellent, free resource for adult education workshops, career development courses, and union meetings.

    The post Video: Myth & Reality About Technology, Skills & Jobs appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.