In response to the sharp fall in economic activity in the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Australian government announced a series of measures to support incomes and employment. The largest was the JobKeeper payment - a wage subsidy to help keep employees and firms connected. In this paper, the authors explore what effect...

This paper concludes that trends in unionisation rates are unlikely to have contributed materially to the decline in wages growth in recent years. It is important to note that this conclusion is limited to only the most direct channel in which unions influence wages - taking part in enterprise-level bargaining. It does not account for...

Australia has a detailed system of ‘awards’ that specify different minimum wages depending on the industry, location and skill of an employee. Using job-level data from a survey of firms, this paper examines the effect of award wage changes on wages, hours worked and the job destruction rate.

This paper examines the resource economy, including both resource extraction and value added of industries that provide inputs to resource extraction and investment, such as business services, construction, transport and manufacturing.