This report focuses on the Core NTE, which consists of food, drink and entertainment (consumption) businesses and these businesses’ economic performance in the latest financial year for which official data is available (2019-20).

Describing a recent investigation of 49 fast food, café and restaurant businesses in Melbourne’s Degraves Street and Hardware Lane and Brisbane’s West End, this report outlines the recovery of $1,212,727 in unpaid wages to potentially vulnerable young workers such as university students.

In a widely shared Facebook post mocking those who would dismiss environmentalists as "latte sipping lefties" who hate Australian jobs, the Young Greens claimed that more people were working as full-time baristas in 2019 than were employed in the coal ind

This research puts a number on the total loss of wages that will be experienced by workers in the broad retail and hospitality sectors through the coming holiday period: $80 million this year, rising to $107 million for a similar period once the rate cuts are fully implemented.

Reduced Sunday and holiday penalty rates for retail and hospitality workers have failed to ignite the 'boom' in employment, as promised by employer groups who supported the change.