ABSTRACT
This chapter is about what has been happening to employment in Australia in recent times and how it has contributed to social and economic well-being. The focus on employment is politically as well as analytically important. In modern capitalist societies, the material welfare of the bulk of the population is delivered through the labour market. The number of jobs and, just as importantly, their quality, determine how the risks and rewards associated with economic development are distributed throughout the population. The class, sectoral and gender dimensions of an employment portfolio cohere in a variety of different combinations. For much of the twentieth century, Australia like many other Western nations used wages, as well as social and other realms of policy, to structure the risks and rewards from economic life through a variant of the classical breadwinner model of employment.
