Job security and the future of work: Australian workers’ views

This ANUpoll, the 25th in the series, reports Australians’ anxieties about the future of work. Positively, it finds that Australians are not particularly concerned about their current employment. However, we are concerned about our prospects of finding employment in the future. We are also more concerned about the threats posed by poor business management and international workers being prepared to work for lower wages, than about the prospect that our jobs will disappear through automation. In general, the representative sample of Australians surveyed in this poll is more worried about the globalisation of employment and trade, than about competition from robots. The findings presented in this report contribute nuance and personal opinion to a public debate dominated by predictions of rapid technological change.