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The Fair Work Commission is responsible for reviewing and setting minimum wages for employees in Australia's national workplace relations system. Each financial year the Commission's Expert Panel for annual wage reviews conducts an annual wage review and issues a decision and national minimum wage order for employees not covered by an award or agreement. This paper is part of research commissioned as part of the 2016-17 review. A number of reports have been released by the Commission the 2016-17 review, each addressing one or more objectives of the Fair Work Act 2009. The purpose of this report is to present a summary of the objective, methodology and main findings from each of these reports.

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This article provides a framework for thinking about labour supply policy in Australia. Several major future challenges for labour supply are identified and the main types of policies that can be used by government to deal with those challenges are described. Recent developments for groups likely to feature in discussions about increasing labour supply are briefly reviewed.

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This review presents a summary of evidence on outcomes from active labour market programs. Active labour market programs aim to increase the likelihood of employment for individuals who are unemployed or at risk of unemployment. The focus of this review is on studies of active labour market programs in Australia, supplemented with international evidence. An overview and historical background on active labour market programs is provided, as well as an introduction to the empirical methods used to estimate the effect of the programs. Evidence on the effects of the main types of programs - case management, work experience programs and formal education and training - is reviewed, and the main findings are distilled into a set of lessons for policy makers. The review concludes that active labour market programs cannot by themselves have a major impact on the rate of unemployment, but some spending on these programs is justified by outcomes such as increasing the pool of unemployed who are job ready and sharing the burden of unemployment. Job search and wage subsidy programs are suggested to be good ways to assist unemployed who are less disadvantaged. For unemployed with higher levels of disadvantage, priority should be given to programs that create jobs with opportunities for linked training, and that provide a pathway to a permanent job.

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The objective of this study is to provide new estimates of the average private rate of return to a university degree in Australia. It considers the case of a hypothetical individual who has completed high school in 2000, and is making a decision on whether to begin a three-year bachelor degree or to enter the workforce in 2001. For the 'base case' scenario of a 'representative' individual making a decision on whether to attend university, the estimate of the average private rate of return to a three-year bachelor degree is 14.5 per cent. Underlying this estimate is a lifetime net monetary gain of $380,958 from undertaking the degree (assuming a zero rate of discount). Estimates of the rate of return to a bachelor degree are fairly robust to alternative scenarios. Rates of return do however show a wide variation across the field of qualification categories. The estimated returns are relatively high for business and administration, and engineering graduates, and relatively low for graduates in the fields of society and culture, and science.

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This report reviews the evidence on mature age employment outcomes in Australia. It has two main purposes, focusing on the role of attitudinal, financial and structural factors: (1) to review data on trends in labour force participation and employment of mature age workers; and (2) to review theory and empirical evidence on the main determinants of employment outcomes for mature age workers. A range of policy options for increasing employment rates of mature age workers are proposed and evaluated. Mature age employment is defined as employment of workers aged over 45 years. Show less

This paper discusses the recent history of the rate of unemployment in New Zealand. The rate of unemployment in New Zealand increased by about 3.5 percentage points between late 2007 and late 2009, and then has remained relatively steady to early 2013. Compared to the most recent previous downturn in the late 1990s, this episode in the late 2000s has involved a larger increase in the rate of unemployment and much smaller subsequent reduction. This paper argues that changes to the rate of New Zealand unemployment can be explained entirely by economic growth outcomes, and do not seem to reflect any structural change in the labour market. This suggests that there are not any impediments to the rate of unemployment falling back to levels that existed in the mid-2000s. Of course, should the rate of unemployment remain at its current level for a prolonged period, hysteresis effects associated, for example with a growing incidence of long-term unemployment, may have some influence.

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This article reviews research on recent developments in earnings inequality in Australia. Four main issues are addressed. First, what are the main changes in earnings inequality which have occurred? Second, what do we know about the causes of changes in earnings inequality? Third, how have earnings differentials between workers in different skills groups changed, and to what extent can those changes be explained by shifts in the relative demand for labour and relative supply of labour by level of skill? Fourth, how have changes in earnings inequality affected the distribution of income?

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The [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID‐19 pandemic is a reminder that, when it comes to the makings of human well-being, health is at the top of the pyramid. At the same time, economic circumstances will be a critical element to how most Australians experience the pandemic - and primarily this will depend on what happens to them in the labour market. This Snapshot describes potential immediate effects on labour supply and labour demand due to the pandemic - and discusses the implications for labour market adjustment and outcomes in Australia.

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This article provides an introduction to wage subsidy programs for jobseekers facing barriers to employment. First, the features of a wage subsidy program are described and a brief history of this type of program in Australia is presented. Second, Australian and international evidence on the impact of wage subsidy programs is reviewed. Third, the main aspects of the design of wage subsidy programs are considered.

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[Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 has caused a decrease in the demand for labour in Australia at a scale and speed never experienced before. Underlying the immediate effect of COVID-19 on total employment are individual-level impacts. For thinking about the labour market impacts of COVID-19 in Australia it is relevant to consider both impacts on young people who will be seeking to enter the labour market and on the workforce who were already in jobs. Understanding the phenomenon of scarring is of considerable importance for forecasting future impacts of COVID-19 on labour market outcomes in Australia; and for policy-makers in seeking to address those impacts.

Scarring occurs when an adverse experience for a worker - associated withmacroeconomic conditions - has negative long-term impacts on their labour market outcomes. For example, a worker who is entering the labour market during a macroeconomic downturn may experience a spell of unemployment or have to take a job for which they are over-qualified - and those experiences then affect the worker's labour market outcomes in future years. Recent studies find that scarring effects are substantial: for example, the main Australian study on scarring finds that graduates entering the labour market at a time when the youth rate of unemployment rate is 5 ppts above average lowers annual earnings of graduates by about 8 per cent at the time of entry and by 3.5 per cent after five years. This article reviews Australian and international evidence on scarring; and provides an overview of the main channels through which scarring occurs.

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