The issue of skills shortages in South East NSW affects business activity, consumer costs and other important community factors, such as health and education services. A review of the most recent literature on skill shortages in Australia may help to refine the nature and extent of the problem, and to focus on responses. In turn...

Drawing on incidences of both reported and unreported crimes, this paper examines what is known about labour trafficking in Australia. In 2007, the Australian Government provided $26.3m over four years to extend and expand the government’s strategy to combat people trafficking, enabling the relevant agencies to expand investigations and prosecutions into emerging areas of exploitation...

The purpose of this report is to quantify the potential contribution of the Government’s participation and productivity reform agenda in education, employment and workplace relations (the Productivity Agenda) to labour productivity, the labour force participation rate and the Australian economy. It is a quantitative analysis of the benefits that can be expected from successful delivery...

Human capital theory supports the view that people with higher levels of education and lower incidences of chronic illness should have higher labour productivity. This paper examines the Australian evidence. Hourly wages can be used as an indicator of labour productivity. While wages are likely to be a reasonable indicator of the effects of education...

Low levels of education generally among people with a disability is one of the factors contributing to their lower rate of labour market participation. What role vocational education and training (VET) plays in ameliorating this is the focus of this report. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics of Australia surveys, the report...