Do you regularly feel too tired after work to make dinner or spend quality time with your family?

This should not be the norm, but as the cost of living continues to rise, more Australians may be at risk of overworking.

Life-work balance in Australia has got worse, according to a second annual study by global employment platform Remote.

Out of 60 countries analysed, Australia ranked eighth this year – a four-place drop since 2023.

Each country’s scores were determined by factors including minimum wage, sick leave, maternity leave, healthcare availability, public happiness, average working hours, LGBTQ+ inclusivity, and a new category of public safety.

Remote deliberately reversed the typical phrase ‘work-life’ balance to emphasise that “personal endeavours and family commitments” should not fall second to careers.

Australia’s drop in rankings does not mean local life-work balance is abysmal; after all, the country still ranks within the top 10.

Remote attributed the change to a lower overall public happiness score combined with a moderate safety rating.

Australia still offers the highest minimum wage among the countries analysed, and one of the shortest work weeks with an average of just over 32 hours per week compared to the 39.19-hour average across the countries Remote analysed.

Working hours increase

University of Sydney Business School professor of management Angela Knox told The New Daily she wasn’t surprised the study found life-work balance in Australia was getting worse.

Although Australia’s average work week might be shorter than international averages, Knox said Australians have been working more to make end meets over the past decade.

As of March, 6.7 per cent of employed Australians (equivalent to 974,000 people) held multiple jobs, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

“It can be people who … might have only been working 15 or 20 hours a week who have taken on a second, and perhaps even a third job, to bring it closer to full-time hours,” Knox said.

“But there could also be [full-time workers] who have taken on a second job just because they feel like they need additional money coming in … because, of course, not all full-time workers are highly paid.”

More work for free

When the economy tightens and fears about job security loom, unpaid working hours also increase, Australia Institute Centre for Future Work industrial and social policy director Fiona Macdonald said.

Last year, the Centre for Future Work found Australian full-time employees worked an average of seven hours per week in unpaid overtime.

Different factors may contribute to the issue across different industries.

“In more professional cultures … workloads are very high and performance is linked to output, and increasingly it’s separated from actual time so the demands on people can be stretched and stretched,” Macdonald said.

“There’s also that … loss of the idea of standard working hours, and that’s what the right to disconnect reforms were trying to tackle.

“In other industries, unpaid overtime just comes about from not giving people enough time to do their tasks … if you’ve got to balance the till or clean up the restaurant … before you go home, that’s always when your paid time is finished.”

Impact of life-work imbalance

The extra working hours, along with associated transit times, could leave Australians too tired or without enough time to play with their children, visit their elderly parents, or do chores around the house.

This can have negative consequences for the worker, their loved ones, and the local community.

“Ongoing stress can create physical ill-health, as well as psychosocial ill health, and that spills over into families,” Knox said.

“The costs of managing the health and the cost of them being unavailable to work … if their health reaches that level of severity, will impact the organisation … [and] supporting workers who are unhealthy increases Medicare levies.”

The issue is also connected to gender inequality.

Macdonald said life-work imbalance disproportionately affects women as they earn less than men on average, and remain largely responsible for household work and family relations.

Need to rethink ‘breadwinner’ model

Nordic countries do well when it comes to life-work balance because they tend to have strong policies that make a difference to workers’ time and income, such as “very good” parental leave and access to free childcare, Macdonald said.

Although Australia has some good policies in place, they are not “world-leading”, and there is much room for improvement.

Current thinking around employment is still centred on the solo “full-time breadwinner” model, Macdonald said.

“There’s been a lot of change towards recognising that workers are worker-carers and people with lives outside work, but we haven’t managed to, for example, reduce our full-time working week for decades,” she said.

“And people have a lot more on their plates; most couple families are dual-earner families, so you’ve got both parents now  … needing to work to pay household expenses.

“That’s [a] big pressure on families, and on communities and extended families as well.”