The Australian Labour Market 2001

Andrews D., Green C. and Mangan J. (2004) Spatial inequality in the Australian youth labour market: the role of neighbourhood composition, Reg. Studies 38, 15–25. Australia has experienced a polarization of income and labour market outcomes over the past 20 years (Gregory and Hunter, 1995; Harding, 1996). This has taken an increasingly spatial dimension (Hunter, 1995a, 1995b), giving rise to concerns that the spatial pooling of disadvantage may hamper the labour market outcomes of youth growing up in poorer residential areas. This paper explores the role that the differential neighbourhood ‘quality’ of an individual’s residential area at age 16 has on their labour market outcomes at age 18 and age 21. Evidence is found that youth who live in poorer quality neighbourhoods face an increased likelihood of being unemployed at both the age of 18 and 21, even after controlling for personal and family characteristics.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse labour market outcomes under the Prices and Incomes Accord. It will specifically concentrate on the evolution of the Accord with respect to nominal wage growth by occupation/skill group, the effect on domestic labour markets of increased trade, skill-biased technology change, the ability of wages to vary with labour revenue product, time lags involved in wage adjustment, and disequilibrium in the wage setting procedures. The first result of the empirics is the identification of a structural break in the wage disparity data around the implementation of the Accord mark II. Using coiutegration and error-correction econometrics, both trade and technological factors (post-structural break) are found to possess high explanatory power in wage disparity growth over the Accord period. Also significant were immigration rates, increased female participation in the workforce, and declining trade union membership. A non-nested test finds that the technology equation encompasses the explanatory power of the trade model, and is thus the better explanation. The interpretation of the trade and technology model parameters find significant evidence for a wage setting segmentation process in the Australian labour market under the Accord: firms most exposed to international influences (i.e. those in import and export markets) having wages set predominantly at the enterprise level, and the residual industries having wages determined by centralised award agreements. The models also suggested that wages at both the award and enterprise level were subject to disequilibrium errors. Additionally, evidence of unemployment hysteresis was found in the respective models.

Educational attainment and gender are firmly established in the labour economics literature as key determinants of an individual's economic standing at a given point in time. The concern of the present paper is to determine the impact of these characteristics on economic progress over time. A multinomial logit approach to estimating occupational attainment at various career points is employed. The use of this method of analysis in conjunction with the intertemporal linking of occupations enables us to provide a number of important insights into economic progress in the Australian labour market. Additional years of education are shown to increase the probability of employment in better jobs at the time of labour market entry and also to enhance career mobility. Analysis of male‐female differences highlights the sizeable gap between the occupational distributions of these groups. Part of this difference may reflect inequality of opportunity between males and females in the Australian labour market.

The 19th-century Australian labour market was defined more than anything else by the issue of labour scarcity. This chapter examines the implications of scarcity for the Australian labour market from the later years of the convict period through to Federation in 1901. It first focuses on free migration to the colonies. Despite relatively high wages, early 19th-century free migration remained relatively low, largely because of the cost of migration. Although migrants were increasingly attracted to Australia because of the gold rushes, the colonies nevertheless needed to implement extensive subsidies to attract suitable immigrants. Next, the chapter explains wages and skills. Although the majority of Australian workers had little employment security, a sizable minority, particularly in the tertiary sector, worked for employers with well-developed internal labour markets. Finally, the chapter explains labour market regulation and union activity. Unions were relatively small and inactive until the passage of legislation protecting their strike funds in the 1870s and 1880s.

Despite a significant number of international graduates staying in the host countries on post-graduation visas, their experiences in gaining access to the host labour market are less documented. This article addresses this critical but under-researched topic. It discusses the ecological circumstances impacting international graduates’ participation in the Australian host labour market, including the temporality of their visas, employers’ concerns, constraints of the market, time issue and bargaining position. Drawing on agency theory, the study shows two forms of agency enacted by international graduates in navigating the host market: needs-response agency, entailing their choice of field, persistence, and early job-seeking, and agency as becoming, entailing their professional identity development to become more employable. The study found the following common strategies adopted by international graduates: proactively explaining their work rights to employers, using alternative job search channels, reskilling, evidencing their professional skills, undertaking internships, networking and creating jobs for themselves and other peers. The study offered fresh insights into international graduates’ career adaptive behaviours, job-seeking skills and career management skills.

The comparative method can be a powerful instrument in understanding the complex relationship of institutions and truman behavior. This article describes an attempt to apply this method to the study of labor markets. The authors compare the sources and areas of recruitment for different occupational groups in Perth, Australia with those observed in the San Francisco Bay Area by F. Theodore Malm and reported on in the July 1954 issue of this Review. The results reported in this article refer, however, only to the two areas chosen for comparison. While Perth may be typical of Australian urban labor markets generally, because of the peculiarities of the San Francisco Bay Area--for example, the high degree of unionization anti relatively small size of employing units--the results cannot be taken as necessarily representative of differences in recruiting patterns elsewhere in the two countries. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

The Economic and Social Outlook Conference that was held in 2011 carried a separate session on the role of women in the Australian labour market for the first time. Women now make up some 45 per cent of the workforce—in the late 1970s, the proportion stood at one‐third. While women play an increasingly more important role in the labour market, the gap between male and female earnings has shown stubborn persistence, at around 15 per cent. Various explanations include productivity‐related characteristics and the changing age profile of the female workforce. For low‐paid workers, these explanations are convincing; for high‐paid workers, both in the public and private sector, the pay gap remains unexplained.

Purpose - To investigate the extent of over-education for recently arrived tertiary educated male immigrants in order to ascertain if higher educated immigrants face assimilation hurdles in the Australian labour market. Design/methodology/approach - Using immigrant longitudinal data (LSIA), this paper uses the job analysis/objective method of defining over-education. Also, bivariate probits are used to account for selectivity into employment when studying the determinants of graduate over-education. The over, required and under-education (ORU) earnings function is utilised to find the rates of return to education investment. Findings - It is found that English speaking background (ESB) immigrants to have similar rates of over-education compared to the native born, while only Asian non-English speaking background (NESB) immigrants see a rise in over-education after tighter immigration and welfare policies were introduced. Returns to required schooling are substantial, but the penalty for excess years of schooling is large, though consistent with the stylised facts of over-education. Research limitations/implications - Short time-frame (up to five years) only allows for an investigation of initial assimilation. Originality/value - Using panel data, this paper is the first to study the initial phase of highly educated immigrant assimilation into the Australian labour market from the viewpoint of job matching rather than just employment.

The concept of capital has been widely applied to understand international graduates’ employability. However, most of the existing literature draws on general definitions of employability capitals based on frameworks developed for domestic graduates. Consequently, there remains limited understanding of how different forms of capital manifest specifically in the context of international graduates. This study aims to contribute to this area by employing a capitals-based approach to explore insights into employability capitals – human, social, cultural, psychological, identity, and agentic – through the experiences of Chinese international graduates in the Australian labor market. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 14 participants, the study offers several key insights. First, human capital highlights the disconnect between qualifications and genuine expertise. Second, social capital emerges as a professional resource that extends beyond the notion of ‘guanxi’. Third, cultural capital is linked to cultural confidence and critical engagement. Fourth, psychological capital demonstrates that resilience and adaptability go beyond simple proactivity. Fifth, identity capital underscores the importance of authenticity as the foundation of a sustainable professional identity. Finally, agentic capital incorporates an ethical dimension that informs agentic practice. The study discusses the implications of these findings for higher education institutions, workplaces, and policymakers, while also acknowledging its limitations.

Current estimates of the contribution of education to economic growth have been questioned because they ignore the interaction of education with ability. Whether the neglect of ability differences in the analyses of the income-education relationship results in estimates that are too high was considered in an earlier paper by one of the authors (Griliches 1970), and a negative answer was conjectured. In this paper, we pursue this question a bit further, using a new and larger body of data. Unfortunately, a definitive answer to this question is hampered both by the vagueness and elasticity of "education" and "ability" as analytical concepts and by the lack of data on early (preschooling) intelligence. The data examined in this paper are based on a 1964 sample of U.S. military veterans. The variables measured include scores on a mental ability test, indicators of parental status, region of residence while growing up, school years completed before service, and school years completed during or after service. These have allowed us to inquire into the separate effects of parental background, intelligence, and schooling. The basic problem and analytical framework can be set out very simply. Let income be a linear function of education and ability, or, Y a + P1E + P(2G + u, where Y is income, E is education, G is ability,

Both global and domestic economic growth remained robust in 2007 resulting in historically low unemployment and high labour force participation in Australia. However, these favourable labour force statistics were overshadowed for much of the year by a number of other issues such as the continuing drought, high oil and petrol prices and associated inflation and interest rate pressures, a November federal election, and the first full year of the operation of the Work Choices legislation. This article will address each of these issues by presenting an analysis of the macroeconomy and labour market, and reviewing the labour market implications of the Work Choices legislation in Australia.

This paper examines the ways that productivity, personal characteristics such as birthplace and gender, structural factors and labour market history impact on the distribution of the burden of unemployment. It is shown that labour market history is a major explanator of unemployment outcomes in the Australian labour market. The results from the empirical analyses of unemployment outcomes are used to identify individuals at risk of being unemployed. When individuals classified as at risk of being unemployed are followed through time, it is found that they spend considerable time looking for work and have short working spells. This suggests a risk index approach may have considerable merit as a way of identifying the relative difficulty individuals experience in the labour market.

2005 represented another good year in terms of labour market performance. In this context it is difficult to justify WorkChoices on the basis that it will improve economic performance. This article undertakes an analysis of the justification for and the likely impact of WorkChoices on the labour market.

SUMMARY While the experience of migrants in the Australian labour market has received considerable attention, few researchers have asked how uniform this experience has been across the country's major metropolitan labour markets. This paper shows that migrants employed in the manufacturing sector exhibit noticeable differences in their relative access to jobs in different parts of the country. This evidence raises a number of questions about the appropriate scale within which to consider the labour participation and occupational selection experience of migrant men and women.

Labour Supply and Childcare: Allowing Both Parents to Choose