A quarter of all employees are now casual employees in the sense of being on temporary contracts with limited entitlements to benefits and little or no security of employment.
Most new jobs created in Australia are for casual workers.
This represents a significant shift away from the notion of full-time and permanent waged employment as the 'standard' employment arrangement. In its place has emerged the idea of the 'flexible firm' comprising a secure group of core workers and a peripheral group of temporary workers, out-workers and subcontractors. There is no standard number of working hours that defines a casual worker. At common law, the main difference between a permanent and a casual worker is the notion that a permanent employee has an ongoing contract of employment of unspecified duration while a casual employee has not. It is interesting to note that many awards and agreements now classify workers as being under either casual, continuing or fixed term contracts.