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Professional Writing Practitioners in Australia

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Solely based on the exceeding statistics it would appear that professional and creative writing fails to provide a guarantee of employment once a degree has been obtained. Research conducted by Graduate Careers Australia (2014), emphasises these figures by illustrating where graduates progress to within specialist employment four months after completion of their degree. The results demonstrated 60.6% of graduates from a language and literature based degree maintained full time employment after graduation (Graduate Careers Australia, 2014, 02). This was almost a 5% decline from graduates who had obtained full time employment in 2012 (GCA, 2013, 02). From the remainder of graduates, 24.7% had obtained part time or casual work and 14.7% were still seeking employment (GCA, 2014, 02). From the graduates who obtained degrees in the language and literature sector, 41.1% enrolled in further full time study after graduation (GCA, 2013, 01). These statistics are focalised on specialist careers within the industry. However, creative and professional writers in the 21st century are obtaining more work through freelancing, while maintaining a part time job through embedded employment. Embedded employees are viewed as outside of the language and literature discipline and freelancers are recognised as unemployed, therefore displaying the statistics as underreported. Modern practioners who are self-employed, freelance writers depend on a ‘portfolio career’ (Inkson 2008, 549) to gather their
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