Analysis of incidence and trends in jobless families in Australia

Dawkins, Gregg and Scutella (forthcoming) using the Income and Housing Costs Survey show that the incidence of jobless families has risen between 1982 and 1997 despite rising employment. This paper suggests that while part of the increase in the jobless household rate has been due to demographic change, part of it has also been due to changes within the labour market which have led to jobless family rates within household types to also rise, however no formal analysis was undertaken. Thus, the objective of this research is to further the analysis and decompose the incidence of jobless families in order to determine whether the trend in jobless families is due to changes in employment levels, household composition or a polarisation of available employment across households.

Project was completed in the third quarter 2002.

Research paper arising from the project is

No.

Melbourne Institute Working Paper Title

09/2002

Employment Polarisation in Australia
By Peter Dawkins, Paul Gregg and Rosanna Scutella, PDF format (1,595KB)