A juggling act: older carers and paid work in Australia

The number of mature age Australians balancing work and informal caring roles will increase in the future. This will be driven by the policy objective of transferring the care of older people on to families, and by the increasing labour force participation, particularly of women. The care of elderly people presents different challenges to the care of children: the care burden increases with age, the person receiving care may not live with the carer, and care needs can be unexpected and difficult to plan for. Evidence shows that people who combine caring and working face many adverse consequences, including absences from the workforce, difficulties developing skills, financial stress, and poor physical and mental health. Recent legislative changes in Australia provide older carers with the right to request flexible work arrangements, such as flexible work hours and days, job sharing and working from home. However, there is a lack of data to determine how beneficial these flexible work options are to carers. This report presents the latest evidence in Australia on the extent to which caring responsibilities prevent people from working, the issues faced by carers in the workforce or looking for work, and possible factors that would enable them to work at all or work more hours.

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