Trust the lefty-rag-of-record in Australia’s wokest city to come up with something like this. In an article showing that male-dominated jobs have the most gruelling work hours, they still somehow manage to make it all about women. Somehow, the Age managed to canvas remote mining sites and not find even one male to interview.
Instead, in an industry where women are just 15 per cent of the workforce – and three-quarters of them working clerical jobs in air-conditioned offices – the Age completely ignores the men. Is it because they want to distract from the fact that their own data shows that male occupations work longer hours?
Analysis of census data by this masthead has revealed assistant drillers, a common job on mine sites, have the nation’s longest average full-time hours at 70.3 hours a week. Next were the drillers they support (68 hours) with shot firers, who prepare and detonate explosives for mining, construction and demolition, third (67.4 hours).
Assistant drillers: 97 per cent male. So, who does the Age interview?
Queenslander Skye Jackat worked for nine months at an iron ore mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia doing the job that topped the list for longest hours […]
Sophie Kelly, 25, has been working as a trainee driller for 2½ years, flying in for two-week swings then flying out for a week off.
In fact, there’s something noticeable about who works the longest hours.
Nationwide, the average weekly hours for full-time workers was 43.7 hours. But for half of all 941 job types tracked by the bureau, the average was between 40 hours and 42.9 hours.
So, which professions greatly exceeded those hours, on average?
Driller’s Assistant, 70 hours and 20 minutes; Driller, 68 hours and 1 minute; Shot Firer, 67 hours and 22 minutes; Ship’s Officer, 64 hours and 30 minutes; Mine Deputy, 63 hours and 46 minutes; Dairy Cattle Farmer, 63 hours and 25 minutes; Miner, 63 hours and 20 minutes; Bulldozer Operator, 60 hours and 20 minutes; Master Fisher, 59 hours and 12 minutes; Deck Hand, 58 hours and 42 minutes.
Notice anything about those jobs? Even dairy farmers are a mostly male-dominated profession.
On the other hand, the jobs working the cushiest hours:
Library Technician, 37 hours and 45 minutes; Library Assistant, 37 hours and 53 minutes; Preschool Aide, 38 hours and 28 minutes; Patents Examiner, 38 hours and 33 minutes; Librarian, 38 hours and 34 minutes; Archivist, 38 hours and 36 minutes; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Worker, 38 hours and 42 minutes; Conservator, 38 hours and 46 minutes; School Laboratory Technician, 38 hours and 46 minutes; Integration Aide, 38 hours and 48 minutes.
Again, notice a pattern? Library technicians: 87 per cent female. Even a seemingly nerdy job like archivist is 70 per cent female, while preschool aides are 98 per cent female. The lowest female representation in the shorter-hour jobs are patents examiners, at 36 per cent.
Buried deep in the article is this:
The census shows full-time men worked an average of 44.6 hours a week, while full-time women averaged 42.1 hours.
I could be forgiven for suspecting the reason the Age went for the feminine angle in long-working mining jobs is because even Age lefties can do the maths and realise that it’s not making much of a case for their so-called ‘gender pay gap’. Instead, what we’re seeing is a work-hours gap.
The data also shows that the common complaint that ‘we’re working harder than ever’ is also a load of bollocks.
The census shows weekly full-time hours have been fairly consistent since data on the issue was first collected in 1966.
Census director Caroline Deans said the biggest shift came after 1983, when the national standard working week changed from 40 hours to 38 hours.
“Back in the ’70s people were working more hours and as we went through the ’80s and ’90s, and today, there are slightly fewer hours worked by people,” she said.
But, sure, Karen, tell me how your 38 hours in an air-conditioned office are ‘slavery’.
