Women ‘want more hours’
About two-thirds of part-time workers, who want to work more hours, are women, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show.
It finds 22 per cent of all part-time staff, or 733,900, do not work as many hours as they would prefer.
Of those, 61 per cent are female, with most (87 per cent) able to start work straight away.
The report reveals women aged 35 to 44 years, who traditionally have young children, are the most likely part-timers wanting more hours, with 97,900 available to start within a month.
They closely are followed by the number of women aged 45 to 54 years, who traditionally have teenage or adult children.
There are 95,800 part-timers in this category wanting more hours.
Almost half, or 47 per cent, of part-time female workers want a full-time job of 35 hours or more a week.
Up to 15 per cent would do anything to get the extra hours, either remaining with their current employer or finding a new one. Part-time staff make up 91 per cent of all underemployed workers.
“The main difficulty in finding work with more hours, most commonly reported by underemployed part-time workers who had looked for work, was `no vacancies in line of work’,” the ABS says.
THE STATS
37 per cent of female part-time workers want to be employed less than 30 hours a week
16 per cent want to work 30 to 34 hours a week
31 per cent prefer 35 to 39 hours a week
15 per cent want to work 40 hours or more a week
46 per cent have a husband or partner
13 per cent are a single parent
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics
