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In this article the author examines some recent trends in home-based employment in Australia, in the over-employed and under-employed and in the regional distribution of unemployment. Changes in labor demand and in job security have produced some specific responses on the part of workers and employers. But the magnitude and direction of these changes is not always clearly understood. With the restructuring of the workforce to meet new global demands, changes are occurring to, or are being demanded of, standard ways of working. People are seeing the need to create niche markets for themselves in the wake of downsizing and the offshore movement of traditional jobs. One of those changes is to the split between those who work at home and those who work in a location away from their private lives and families. Some researchers have suggested that the increase in those working at home has been quite marked, driven by workforce restructuring. Survey of persons employed at home in late 1995 estimated that 230,000 women worked at home but of these, only about 16,000 are registered in occupations that might be classified as fashion industry out-workers.

The article presents the results of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 1994. Acting on the recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Federal Government allocated funds to the ABS to conduct the survey. The survey commenced design in 1992 and went into the field during early 1994. The first publication from that survey, released in February 1995, reveals some interesting information about families and service usage. The Acting Australian Statistician commented that a "close cooperative relationship between ABS and Aboriginal and Tones Strait Islander people led to a survey that was sympathetic to their cultural values and priorities," and his statement appears to be reflected by other evidence. Compared with the Australian picture generally, indigenous households are more likely to be family based, and multi-family. Indigenous families are more than five times as likely as non-indigenous families to be sharing with other families in the same households.