The Centre for Future Work, hosted by The Australia Institute thinktank, is focussing in 2021 on overwork among Australians, including excessive overtime that is often unpaid. The Centre’s latest report, Working from Home or Living at Work, marks the 13th annual Go Home on Time Day – an initiative established by the CFW.
The report considers whether working from home will become the 'new normal', even after the acute phase of the pandemic passes, and what new pressures on working hours, work-life balance and unpaid overtime are unleashed by this phenomenon.
Australians work on average over 6 hours of unpaid overtime each week, amounting to 319 hours of unpaid overtime per year per worker averaged across all forms of employment. Based on a standard 38-hour workweek, this is equivalent to more than 8 weeks of unpaid work per worker per year. Extrapolated across Australia’s workforce, this implies total unpaid overtime of 3.3 billion hours per year.
And this is before the burden of women's unpaid work at home is added to the GDP.
