Australia's working culture is quietly extracting a staggering cost from its workforce
According to new research from the Centre for Future Work, the average Australian worker logs nearly 3.6 hours of unpaid overtime every week.
This is the equivalent to more than 172 hours annually, or roughly 4.5 full-time work weeks of entirely unpaid labour.
The financial impact is significant. If compensated at median wage rates, that unpaid overtime represents an average loss of $7,930 per worker annually or $305 a fortnight.
Across the economy, this amounts to almost $95.8 billion in lost income, a figure that dwarfs the 2025-26 Commonwealth budget for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Aged Care Services combined.
While the government's Right to Disconnect laws, which came into effect in August 2024, appear to be having a stabilising effect on full-time workers' unpaid overtime, a troubling trend has emerged: part-time and casual employees are increasingly working longer unpaid hours.
Full-time employees worked an average of 3.8 hours of unpaid overtime weekly, roughly one hour unpaid for every ten hours paid. But part-time workers, who are already earning less and working fewer paid hours, are logging 3.7 hours of unpaid work per week.
When calculated as a proportion of their paid hours, this represents a far heavier burden: part-time workers effectively give away one hour for every seven they're paid for, while casual workers...
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