Living Apart Together: How Working Away Affects Individuals, Households and Wellbeing

For a long time, the Australian economy has been reliant on workers who travel long distances to work in, particularly, mining, agriculture and nursing. This century has seen an increase in long-distance travel for service sector work in the business, finance, health and technology sectors, among others. As a measure of social and economic significance, the number of mobile workers in Australia – those who commute more than 100 km – increased by 37% over 2006–2011, from 155,610 to 213,773, comprising 2.1% of the workforce. The 2016 Census revealed this number had increased further, to c. 320,000 workers, with c. 200,000 commuting over 250 km. The number of people impacted by longdistance work arrangements increases when workers’ families are included. To date, however, there has been little research that explains the complex social and economic relationships around this working style across different industry sectors. The practice of working away from home has been given a number of terms, including long-distance commuting and non-resident work. We prefer to use the term ‘working away’, which entails travel away from the worker’s primary residence – or home – for employment purposes, for days or weeks at a time. We use the term ‘mobile worker’ to refer to individuals who work away. The term ‘living apart together’ (LAT) is used to refer to the household arrangements of mobile workers’ families, where partners (and children) are present. In ‘resource regions’ such as Australia, working away is often conflated in policy and popular understandings with fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) resource sector workers. However, these workers comprise just 20% of mobile workers in Australia. Nevertheless, to date the bulk of research on the personal and familial impacts of working away, as well as policy and media attention on these issues, has concentrated on mine workers in the resource sector. Little has been said about mobile workers outside this sector, or about ancillary workers within the resource sector (e.g. construction, catering and health). The aim of the report is to provide helpful information for those involved in industries in which working away is integral. The content is derived from a project that explores the experiences and complexities of working away on both mobile workers and, where relevant, their partners and families, with particular attention to wellbeing. Wellbeing refers to an often subjective measure of life satisfaction, rather than an objective measure of health (the presence or absence of specific diseases) or economic (employment, income) indicators. In a geographical framework, wellbeing is integrally related to personal connections to place, which can be disrupted in the context of working away. The project was thus designed to develop deeper understanding of the positive and negative impacts of working away on individuals and households, as well as how individuals and households manage these impacts. Specific concerns included effects on long-term decisionmaking, financial choices, household practices and personal and familial wellbeing. Research was conducted with mobile workers and mobile workers’ partners based across Australia, including those whose primary residence is located in a major capital city and those whose primary residence is located in a remote or regional town. The research team also interviewed stakeholders in key mobileworker sectors, such as peak industry body representatives and human resource representatives