Getting the long-term jobless into mainstream employment is a major challenge for Australian governments, especially in areas of concentrated disadvantage. The Brotherhood’s approach, also used effectively overseas, is to use an 'intermediate labour market' (ILM) as a bridge between long-term unemployment and the mainstream labour market. This research report presents initial findings about the effectiveness...

In recent years, employment has grown strongly while output has grown modestly. This implies a weak growth in labour productivity that is difficult to interpret. This article explores some possible explanations for recent economic growth and labour productivity outcomes, with a focus on developments in the composition of growth. It also examines whether recent productivity...

This paper provides the results of econometric examination of the causes of labour market outcome for immigrants to Australia. Because labour market success is measured on a continuous scale it is possible to confirm the importance of a number of immigrant attributes in explaining labour outcomes, but it is also possible to show that some...

Although the outsourcing of services jobs to offshore economies has attracted a lot of media attention, there are no official statistics that specifically measure this phenomenon. OECD research has identified statistics which can be used as a proxy for the impact of offshoring in developed economies such as Australia. These data indicate that, in terms...

Youth is often equated to the dynamics of transitions between various states: from adolescence to adulthood, from school to work, from family protection to personal responsibility. Often labelled as the age group with the highest unemployment rate, young people are seen as having specific needs which involve specific risks. In the late 1990s newly elected...