Using data from 191 Australian state elections, the authors test how voters respond to economic conditions. They find that unemployment has a strong impact on election outcomes, with each additional percentage point of unemployment reducing the incumbent's re-election probability by 3-5 per cent. However, when luck (unemployment in other states) is separated from competence (unemployment...

Unemployment, and in particular youth unemployment, is one of the most significant economic and social issues facing the Illawarra region. Whilst the official youth unemployment statistics can be debated from one month to the next, what is clear is that for at least the past two decades our region’s young people have experienced a consistently...

The Federal Government's Job Network is no longer fit-for-purpose. The program has been successful, but its economic backdrop has changed. Job Network was established to place large numbers of unemployed people into scarce jobs. Its role today is vastly different - preparing a smaller number of (often) disadvantaged individuals for a wide variety of jobs...

The current economic expansion has been broadly-based across the states, with unemployment around multi-decade lows in all states and territories. While growth rates in Western Australia and Queensland have been the highest in the country in recent years, the divergences between the states narrowed somewhat over 2007, with high growth rates being recorded in most...

This paper briefly examines the development of the Job Network and evaluations of this system to determine the Job Network's capacity to cater to the needs of difficult-to-place job seekers and the long-term unemployed, and how this capacity might be improved.