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The collection of the National Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) in 2002 provides a valuable new source of data on Indigenous labour force status. Apart from the 1994 [National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey] NATSIS until now the only useful data available to assess the labour market circumstances of Indigenous Australians are the five yearly census collections. NATSISS improves on the census in three ways: one, it identifies [community development employment programs] CDEP scheme employment; two, for the first time, analysis of labour market issues is possible in very remote areas of Australia; and three, it contains information on a wide range of somewhat unusual social, demographic, cultural and economic variables, such as health status, speaking an Aboriginal language, having used an employment service and access to transport. Even so, no data set is perfect and NATSISS suffers from not having any information on a very important variable for an understanding of economic success or failure, the length of labour market experience. By comparing wage and employment econometric estimations with those available in a more complete data set, [Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia] HILDA, [the authors] are able to illustrate the significance of this omission.

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This study provides new and detailed estimates of gender segregation in the Australian labour market. Using [Australian Bureau of Statistics] ABS Labour Force Survey and Census data, we explore and decompose long-term trends of segregation and integration by employing a shift-share analysis and index measures across time, age and space. We find that over the last three decades, gender segregation has not significantly changed across either industries or occupations. Gender segregation across industries is, in general, more resistant to gender integration than across occupations and detailed classifications are profoundly more segregated than top-level classifications. Additionally, gender segregation increases as individuals get older and the farther they work from urbanised locations. We show that decades of gender equality policy have not had a major impact on minimising labour market segregation. Women continue to have more constrained labour supply choices than men, hindering labour market efficiency and flexibility.

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This paper analyses high school completion rates, known as ‘apparent retention rates’ in Australia, from 1989 to 2002. Unlike most measures of educational attainment or participation in Australia, the apparent retention rate was lower at the end of the 1990s than it had been in the early 1990s. We adjust ‘official’ retention rates directly and with the aid of regression equation parameters to remedy a number of well-known deficiencies in their measurement, notably Year 12 repetition and migration. The path followed by our adjusted retention measure during the 1990s departs substantially from that of the ‘official’ estimates. We conclude that the apparent retention rate was an especially poor measure of national school completion in the early 1990s, when it peaked. Unlike those ‘official’ estimates, the adjusted measure of Year 12 retention was no lower in the late 1990s than it had been in the early 1990s.

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This study is the first to use welfare participation to investigate the impact of working during adolescence on outcomes later in life. I use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979 data to investigate the impact of early-life employment on both the welfare payment and probability of welfare participation in the respondents' 20s and 30s. I use a variety of model specifications, including random effect and Heckman selection models, to check the robustness of the results. The study shows that the impact is generated mainly from the hours worked during the ages of 17, 18 and 19. Working one extra full-time week per year between the ages of 17 and 19 reduces the probability of receiving welfare in the 20s by 8.2 per cent (2.5 percentage points) for females and 10.9 per cent (2 percentage points) for males.

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The employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth (aged 15-19 years) increases in the years immediately following the end of compulsory schooling and continues to widen into the 20s. Indigenous youth are also more likely to work in part-time, casual and unskilled jobs than non-Indigenous youth. The situation for young Indigenous women is markedly worse than for men, even though educational participation and attainment is similar. Early labour market experiences are likely to have both immediate and ongoing effects, reducing income, wealth accumulation and impeding future labour market success. However, there are signs of improvement in the labour market situation for Indigenous youth, particularly in non-remote areas. Between 2011 and 2016, educational participation and employment increased. Growing educational attainment is likely to further improve employment rates because Indigenous youth who have completed Year 12 have far better outcomes in the labour market than early school leavers.

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New Caledonia, the largest French Territory in the South Pacific, enjoys a high level of standard of living but is marked by huge social inequalities as a result of geographic and ethnic origin. This study highlights the differences in school achievement and labour market outcomes between Kanak (indigenous people) and non-Kanak. Using data from the four most recent censuses (1989, 1996, 2004 and 2009), we show that though dramatic progress has been made in the area of school achievement, employment rates still differ widely across ethnic groups. We decompose the gap in labour market attachment between Kanak and non-Kanak using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition for non-linear regression models. The decomposition shows that at least three-quarters of the gap can be attributed to differences in observed characteristics between Kanak and non-Kanak women. For men, the differences in observed characteristics of the two populations account for 38.5 per cent of the gap.

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The dominance of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme in certain regions of Australia complicates the interpretation of any analysis of Indigenous employment. In order to enhance interpretation, the factors underlying Indigenous employment should be examined separately for areas where the CDEP scheme is relatively prominent. The 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey and census data between 1981 and 1996 are used to highlight potential biases in the effects of educational attainment (and other factors) on employment prospects of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations.

As a program designed in part to overcome labour market disadvantage and the lack of local employment options, the CDEP scheme is directed towards Indigenous males with poor employment prospects, especially low skilled workers, youth, and people who have difficulty in speaking English. This expansion of the scheme appears to be negatively interacting with the process of human capital accumulation in remote Indigenous communities.

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This paper documents the gendered polarisation of work hours between mothers and fathers in Australia. Drawing on a large Australian sample of employee parents, [the authors] investigate the links between job quality and employment contract. [The authors] focus is on mothers and fathers of young children - families facing high care demands - and investigate whether shorter and longer hour jobs carry the same contract and quality costs. Using a truncated measure of job quality, [the authors] find for both mothers and fathers that moderate full time hour jobs were the jobs with optimal quality and stable employment contracts. Poor job quality and casual contracts were common in very short hour jobs, usually worked by mothers. At the other end of the work hour spectrum, the very long hour jobs predominantly worked by fathers also showed a dip in job quality.

[The authors'] study suggests that the gendered polarisation of hours in the Australian labour market, supported by a one-and-a-half earner family strategy, undermines parents', particularly mothers', access to good quality jobs. It also reinforces gender inequality by making it harder for fathers to fully engage in parenting and mothers to fully participate in employment and earn a decent income, with consequent hardship in later life.

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Despite considerable research on differences in labour market outcomes between native born New Zealanders and immigrants, the extent of discrimination experienced by the foreign born in the workplace remains relatively unexplored. We use micro data from the Confidentialised Unit Record File of the 2008 New Zealand General Social Survey (n=8,721) to examine the determinants of self-reported discrimination in the workplace. We find that immigrants are significantly more likely than New Zealand-born employees to report that they experience discrimination in the workplace. There are noticeable gender differences in determinants of perceived discrimination, which interact with birthplace. The highest likelihood of self-reported workplace discrimination is found amongst migrants from Asia and the Pacific Islands. Discrimination is more likely to be reported by those with higher education and those who are mid-career. We test and correct for selection bias in measuring the impact of factors influencing perceived discrimination and find such bias to be present for men but not for women.

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This research describes the Australian domestic skilled labour migration system as recorded at the 2006 Census, and specifically examines the role of the Northern Territory [NT] within that system. The international literature suggests that most labour migration conforms to core-periphery (CP) patterns, although there is evidence that other structures are becoming increasingly common. There is little known about CP patterns for labour migration within Australia, the emergence of alternative structures, or what role the Northern Territory plays in the national system. This research shows consistently strong CP structures within Australia’s states, but not in the Northern Territory. Instead, the NT has weak links to mainland state capital cities; a weak CP relationship with South Australia that may be a result of historical ties; and weak relationships with immediately adjacent regions. The challenge for the Northern Territory is to strengthen one or more of the structures or risk increasing difficulties in recruiting skilled workers.

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