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Precarious working arrangements, defined by temporary casual and fixed-term employment agreements, are a complex, often hidden feature of academia in Aotearoa New Zealandi. At present, little is known about the conditions of insecure academic work, the size of this workforce, nor how these workers have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This report provides an insight into the reality of insecure academic work in universities from those who responded to the 2021 Precarious Academic Work Survey.

We highlight that in Aotearoa we have a highly trained, casual and fixed-term academic workforce who are engaged in long-term cycles of precarity. Among the 760 participants surveyed, more than one-quarter (28.9%) had been precariously employed for five years or longer. Further, nearly sixty percent (59.2%) had accepted extra work to support themselves or their whānau, even when it jeopardised their other responsibilities (eg, completing their degrees). Over half (52.7%) of all students, and nearly two-thirds (64.4%) of PhD students surveyed, had held three or more employment agreements at a university in the last 12 months. Financial need (71.6%) was most frequently cited as an important factor in participants’ decisions to engage in precarious work, and over half (52.4%) of participants experienced a rise in their living costs due to working from home during the pandemic.