In 2020, The McKell Institute published Wage cutting strategies in the mining sector, a report which calculated the economic impacts of labour-hire and casualisation in Australia’s mining sector. That report identified that, routinely, major mining sector employers were utilising labour-hire firms to minimise wage costs. The 2020 report noted that, while it was the individual workers who suffered most directly from such cost cutting, the communities longreliant on a vibrant mining sector were impacted, too.

Two years on, this report examines the most recently available data to update the 2020 report.