A reader called me today to say that I had missed a media story I have long tracked, that of students turning to prostitution. And so I had. It’s rarely genuinely news – rather, it’s a story sold to the media to advance a political agenda. I wrote about the research reported in this story in June last year. But Rose Jackson, President of the National Union of Students, does manage to put a new twist on it:

I’m well aware of international students who have moved into sex work to support themselves while they’re studying here in Australia and I think that’s a pretty poor indictment [sic] on us as a country supporting students who have come here to study.

You know what she means. But why is it an indictment on Australia? Surely if there is anything wrong going on here it is a reflection on the people who arrived in Australia to study without adequate money to cover their costs, and not on the country? After all, they knew the rules and there are plenty of other places they could have chosen for their studies. But in Ms Jackson’s world, people are never responsible for their actions, the rest of us are.

Interestingly, the sex workers reported in these stories are generally far more level-headed than the people trying to exploit them politically. As reported on ABC radio last Friday:

Sex worker Rebecca says that as well as the lucrative financial returns, sex work gives students the flexibility that they need to study.

REBECCA: In terms of students, I think that

Last week’s labour mobility data showed that men are more likely to be sacked than women. Admittedly, with overall retrenchment rates so low, it is not a huge difference in absolute terms – 2.4% compared to 1.9%. But relatively, men are noticeably more vulnerable. I haven’t gone back to calculate the differences over all the years of the job mobility survey, but the same pattern was there in the first survey in 1972 (3%/2.1%) and in 1984 (4.9%/4%).

The Melbourne Institute report on the HILDA survey saw this result in their data too and tried to work out why. After controlling for various factors including educational attainment, industry, and being casual or part-time they found that, while the gap narrowed, being female still conferred an employment security advantage. Women’s greater job security was also reflected in their subjective perceptions of how safe their jobs were. So women’s rising employment share over time could go some small way to explaining the good results on job security that we currently see.

But it still doesn’t explain why women are less likely to be fired than men. The Melbourne Institute report speculates that perhaps women are less likely to cause trouble at work than men. My experience is generally the opposite – they seem more likely to fight among themselves – but since my uni days I’ve only had office jobs, and perhaps the social skills (or lack thereof) of blue collar males land them in trouble.

Another suggestion in the Melbourne Institute report is that employers, who tend to be male, feel less comfortable sacking women than men. Perhaps there is some residual code of the gentleman at play. Or perhaps they fear the waterworks that may follow the giving of notice.

Their third suggestion, and the one I found most convincing, is that because more men than woman are in the labour force there is a selection effect, so that males of limited competence are more likely to be in the workforce than similarly competence-deprived women. With a larger pool of men than women likely to be sacked for stuffing up, it follows that more of them will in fact be shown the door.

These are not mutually exclusive possibilities. I will be interested to hear if readers (including lurkers) have any other ideas.