Investing in people, or investing in money?

Metalskin, It also depends on age as well. Im 15 and my friends work at fastfood restaurants and only get like 5-6$ an hour.... When you get older you get more money dont you?

yeah age has a big difference in australia. but i'm pretty sure those rates I mentioned apply from age 18+. I think there is an increase in min wage between 18 and 21, but not 100% certain.

ahh, did a search and found that in Queensland (it can vary per state), the minimum wage is 467.40 for full time employement ($11.6850 per hour, 40 hour week). Thats at age 20, if your younger, you get a percentage of that as minimum. The figures are, 17 and under or first years exp $6.42 per hour, 18 or second years exp $7.5955 per hour, 19 years but less than 3 years exp $8.7640 per hour, 3 years exp $9.9325 and at 20 years its $11.6850 per hour.

Now that's for a perm/part-time. For casual i'm not sure, but i would expect 13 or 14 an hour for a 20 year old min for casual labour. Now different industries have union agreements for above award min rates, so the above is the bare min you will get, normaly you will get more.

In addition you get 9% super contibution from your employer compulsary (you dont get it, it goes in teh bank for your retirement).

We are currently learning about topics such as this in Commerce at school.
About employment and wages and things such as fringe benefits. Australia currently has an employment rate of 48-50% i think. Thats including children, elderly and homeless who cant work as apart of the unemployed.

yeah, the government figures are around umm... 5.1 percent of the work force is unemployed, lowest in 30 years approx.

Of course every government, liberal or labor, uses tricks to make it smaller. The figure is calculated based on a mixture of tax income and unemployement benifits. Prob is that if your under 18, you dont get unemployment benifits, you get youth allowance, so your not in that unemployment figure. Also once a government made it so that everyone over x amount of years unemployed had to go on a work experiance/study course (labour i think it was), while on it you didn't get unemployment benifits. This was just before an election and was used to try and reduce the unemployment figures.

Australia's biggest problem (and most western nations, though it does include china) is the aging population. we live longer than ever before, linger longer with problems like parkisons and require a lot of government help. The effective working population of most nations is shrinking quite rapidly.

In China they relaxed the one child rule in Bejing because of this problem. their one child policy has had a massive impact to the aging population.

How about Singapore has a 0% unemployment rate. Not including children or the elderly.

Back to the topic. You can really do both at the same time. You can be investing money by working but you can also invest in people by helping them more practically by helping them by tutoring them or teaching them living skills, skills which may earn them a job or help them to survive.