The report was prepared before the coronavirus outbreak and the subsequent announcement of a six-month payment that effectively doubles the rate of the JobSeeker Allowance (Newstart) and Youth Allowance. Nonetheless, the report provides important insights that could be applied by government to effectively reduce long-term unemployment in the lead up to Australia's recovery from the...

South Australia enters 2017 facing mass layoffs in the automotive manufacturing industry and the potential closure of the local steel industry. These two shocks combined threaten to obliterate more than 25,000 jobs. Read the full article on The Conversation.

When the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the September Labour Force Survey data, shadow minister for employment and workplace relations Brendan O'Connor said the labour market participation rate was in “free fall” and that “people have stopped looking for work”. Is that right? Read the full article on The Conversation.

Since 2014, SVA has been incubating a model for demand-led employment called the Industry Employment Initiative (IEI). The model aims to create sustainable employment for disadvantaged job seekers, while helping employers meet their recruitment needs and corporate responsibility objectives. Incubating the IEI has highlighted the importance of knowing your ‘endgame’ and your stage of development...

Surveys have errors. Tax data errors are rare, but they still matter. This paper analyses measurement error in the classification of employment. We show that the true employment rate and time-invariant error rates can be identified, given access to two measures of employment with independent errors. Empirical identification requires at least two periods of data...