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PREFERRED WORKING HOURS OF WAGE AND SALARY EARNERS, QUEENSLAND, OCTOBER 2006

In October 2006, an estimated 1.6 million wage and salary earners resided in private dwellings in Queensland. Of these, 842,500 were male wage and salary earners who usually worked an average of 40.7 hours per week compared with 786,800 female wage and salary earners who usually worked an average of 31.7 hours per week.

In total, 505,000 (31.0%) wage and salary earners in Queensland usually worked more than 40 hours per week. Of these, 367,300 (72.7%) were male.

One in five (19.9% or 323,600) wage and salary earners reported that they usually worked unpaid hours. Education and Training was the industry with the highest proportion of wage and salary earners who reported usually working unpaid hours (47.0%).

Of all male wage and salary earners, 18.9% (159,500) worked an average of 7.6 hours of paid overtime per week while 6.0% (47,000) of female wage and salary earners worked an average of 4.5 hours of paid overtime per week. Manufacturing (27.6%) and Construction (27.2%) were the industries with the highest proportions of wage and salary earners working paid overtime.

Just over half of all wage and salary earners preferred their usual hours per week (50.8% or 828,000) while one-third (33.4% or 545,300) reported that they would like to work fewer hours. The remainder (14.1% or 229,500) reported that they would like to work more hours per week.

More than half of Managers (57.8%) reported that they would prefer to work fewer hours per week with 22.3% of these wage and salary earners willing to work fewer hours for less pay.