Taking Care: Mature age workers with elder care responsibilities

Workers’ elder care responsibilities are likely to increase significantly over the next few years, bringing new challenges for governments, employers and workplace policy. Elder care is overwhelmingly conducted by women in the peak working years of 35 to 54 years, who suffer significant adverse effects on labour market participation including changing jobs, reducing working hours or refusing promotion in order to provide care.

Yet there is currently very little research on these workers’ preferences and the constraints they face to participate in the labour market and on how and where their flexibility needs are being met by employers.

This new research Taking Care: Mature age workers with elder care responsibilities  (pdf - 1.77Mb), conducted by the Women and Work Research Group at the University of Sydney and commissioned by NSW Industrial Relations, explores the available research on working mature-aged carers and identifies common challenges faced by these workers.