Who Cares? Volume 2: Employment Structure and Incomes in the Australian Care Workforce

In the Census of 2001, approximately 1 in 42 employed Australians reported that their main job was in a caring occupation in a community services industry such as child care or non-residential care services. These 'care workers' assist the hundreds of thousands of Australians, to whom community service organisations provide care and support. Evidence from the Census suggests that there was significant change in the distribution of employment between occupations and industry subdivisions in the community services industry between 1996 and 2001. In this, the second Volume of 'Who Cares?' we examine these and other developments. We present evidence of deinstitutionalisation, deprofessionalisation, functional underemployment, and relatively poor pay in community service industries. These factors appear to be driving care workers out of community services and into other human service industries like health and education.