In 2003, over a quarter of all wage and salary earners were employed on a casual basis, and in the period since 1988 more than half of all new jobs created have gone to casual workers. Casual workers today are drawn from a wide cross-section of the Australian population. In this Research Note Tony Kryger looks at recent growth in casual employment and compares the characteristics of casual workers with those of ongoing employees.

The Research Note also looks at the similarity, across a number of variables, between the incidence of casual employment and the unemployment rate. This analysis lends weight to the argument that casual employment is not a preferred option for many workers, but rather an alternative to unemployment when no ongoing jobs are available.