The state government of New South Wales recently awarded a contract for the purchase of 512 new intercity passenger rail cars to a consortium that will manufacture the equipment in South Korea.  The contract is worth $2.3 billion, including an unspecified sum to cover maintenance of the double-decker cars over an initial 15-year period.  The government chose to import the cars from Korea instead of purchasing made-in-Australia products, claiming this was the "cheapest" option.  However, major government purchases have important indirect effects on many economic, social, and fiscal variables: including GDP, employment, incomes, exports, and even government revenues.  A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis must take those broader impacts into consideration; governments should make decisions that maximize the overall social net benefit of procurement, not simply minimize the up-front purchase cost to government.

It was a "sleeper" issue in the recent election, and led to the defeat of some high-profile Liberal candidates.  But now the debate over penalty rates for work on weekends and public holidays shifts to the Fair Work Commission.  The economic arguments in favour of cutting penalties (as advocated by lobbyists for the retail and hospitality sectors) are deeply flawed.

Regardless of who wins the Federal election, the major issue facing Australians is the future of work.

There are startling and credible predictions that more than five million Australian jobs will simply disappear in the next 15 years, as a result of technology. That's 40% of the jobs that exist in Australia today.

The Centre for Future Work spoke to Four Corners about insecure work and what's coming down the pipeline for workers.

Click here to watch the full Four Corners report.

We have prepared six shareable infographics based on material in our research paper, "Jobs and Growth... and a Few Hard Numbers," which compared Australia's economic performance under the respective postwar Prime Ministers.

Voters typically rank economic issues among their top concerns.  And campaigning politicians regularly make bold (but vague) pronouncements regarding their competence and credibility as “economic managers.”  In popular discourse, economic “competence” is commonly equated with being “business-friendly.”

In this briefing paper Jim Stanford digs beneath vague claims about economic competence and friendliness to business, and considers more concrete indicators of economic progress. The paper asks: is there any correlation between the policy outlook of those respective governments, and in particular its “business credentials,” and Australia’s real economic progress?

A new report from the Australia Institute shows that on a range of measures, the performance under the current government has been worse than that under Gillard, write Greg Jericho.

You can read the full article at The Guardian here.

Jim Stanford talks to Fran Kelly about the Centre for Future Work's new report 'Manufacturing (still) matters' on Radio National Breakfast.

Why the decline of Australian manufacturing is NOT inevitable, and what Government can do about it. 

The insecure nature of work in Australia today can be illustrated through the following infographic (based on 2015 data published by the ABS). Australia has over 19 million residents of working age (which the ABS defines as anyone over 15). Of those, 12.5 million “participated” in the labour market (by working or actively seeking it). Participation has declined in recent years, in large part because of poor job prospects; that’s a turnaround from earlier decades when participation (especially by women) increased steadily.