Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/35363
- Title
- Labour underutilisation in Australia
- Author/Creator
-
Carlson, Ellen;
Mitchell, William
- Institution
- The University of Newcastle. Faculty of Business & Law, School of Economics, Politics and Tourism
- Description
- The unemployment rate is often used as a summary comparative measure and captures the attention of the media more often than other labour market indicators. However, it is a narrow concept of underutilisation and ignores many other sources of labour wastage. In this paper, we discuss the limitations of the unemployment rate in this respect and compute a range of measures for Australia which are designed to provide better indication of labour slack. We present two hours-based measures of labour underutilisation for Australia, which quantify the degree of underutilisation and underemployment among the unemployed, the hidden unemployed, and the part-time workers who desire more hours of work. We conclude that the official unemployment significantly understates the degree of underutilisation in Australia. Finally, we examine the presence of cyclical non-linearities in several indicators of underutilisation. We conclude that the asymmetries present impact more significantly on the most disadvantaged in the labour market.
- Relation
- 4th Path to Full Employment and 9th National Conference on Unemployment. The Path to Full Employment: Proceedings, Refereed Papers, 4-6 December, 2002, The University of Newcastle, Australia (Callaghan, NSW 4-6 December, 2002) p. 37-53
- Relation
- http://e1.newcastle.edu.au/coffee/conferences/2002/abstracts.html
- Date
- 2002
- Publisher
- Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle
- Keyword(s)
-
unemployment rate;
labour market indicators;
Australia;
labour underutilisation;
underemployment
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/35363
- Identifier
- ISBN:1920701095
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