Non-standard work timing: evidence from the Australian Time Use Survey

Non-standard work is relatively common in Australia, with 63 per cent of weekday workers aged between 20 and 59 years working sometime outside 8am to 6pm. However, only 15 per cent of all working-time takes place outside standard hours. Workers in a range of service and manual industries, such as hospitality, health, mining and manufacturing, have high rates of work at non-standard times. Working long hours or part-time increases the chance of working at non-standard times, and there is some evidence that workers without post-school qualifications, in low-skill occupations and from non- English speaking backgrounds are disproportionately more likely to work at non-standard times.Non-Standard Work Timing;Australian Time Use Survey

The Impact of Labour Market Policies on Productivity in OECD Countries

We investigate the impact of labour market policies on labour and multifactor productivity with industry-level data. First and foremost, labour market policies can influence average measured productivity through their impact on employment. Other things equal, employment growth tends to be associated with lower average measured labour productivity growth as more low-skilled workers enter the workforce. However, policies can also have sizeable direct effects on individual productivity levels and/or growth by creating incentives for workers to invest in training, facilitating reallocation of resources to their most productive uses and generating or maintaining high-quality job matches. We find that employment protection legislation, minimum wages, parental leave and unemployment benefits influence productivity through multiple channels, over and above their impact on employment levels.Regulation, Labour Market, Productivity, OECD

Employment outcomes

This paper examines trends in the employment rate of Indigenous Australians and how these trends vary by demographic and geographic characteristics, with a particular focus on changes between 2011 and 2016. While overall growth in the employment rate was slow, there are wide disparities in employment performance by region. In nonremote areas of Australia, the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous employment rates fell slightly between 2011 and 2016. In remote areas, the gap widened. This was due to both the demise of the Community Development Employment Projects scheme and weak labour market conditions in remote areas over this period. In general, the growth of Indigenous women�s employment rates has outperformed that of Indigenous men, partly because Indigenous women are more likely than men to work in occupations and industries where employment opportunities have been growing quickly and will continue to do so in the near future. Increasing education and skill levels among the Indigenous population will be the key to further improving employment performance in the future. For the Indigenous population, rapid increases in educational attainment between 2011 and 2016 helped to offset the effects of the weak labour market. However, the average education level of the Indigenous population remains low. This is particularly the case for the large cohort of the working-age population who are currently not employed, the bulk of whom have no formal qualifications.Funding for this project was provided by the Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

Indigenous youth employment and the school-to-work transition

Data from the 2016 Census show that Indigenous youth (aged 15-29 years) are less likely to be employed or studying than their non-Indigenous counterparts. The employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth increases in the years immediately following the end of compulsory schooling, and continues to widen into the 20s. Indigenous youth are also more likely to work in part-time, casual and unskilled jobs than non-Indigenous youth. The situation for young Indigenous women is markedly worse than for men, even though educational participation and attainment are similar. These early labour market experiences are likely to have both immediate and ongoing effects, reducing income and wealth accumulation, and impeding future labour market success. However, there are signs of improvement in the labour market situation for Indigenous youth, particularly in nonremote areas. Between 2011 and 2016, increases in educational participation and employment saw fewer Indigenous youth disengaged from work and study. Growing educational attainment is likely to further improve employment rates because Indigenous youth who have completed Year 12 have far better outcomes in the labour market than early school leavers.Funding for this project was provided by the Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

Implications of the 2018-19 Budget for Indigenous Australians

This Topical Issues Paper provides an overview of the implications for Indigenous Australians of the 2018–19 Federal Budget, focusing on both Indigenous-specific budget announcements as well as general or mainstream measures that have particular relevance for Indigenous Australians. It includes an assessment of both the Budget papers and the Commonwealth Government’s political narrative which accompanied the budget announcements

Poverty transitions in nonremote Indigenous households: The role of labour marker and household dynamics

Using data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, this paper estimates year-to-year poverty entry and exit rates for Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals living in nonremote areas of Australia. Indigenous Australians of working age have a higher probability of entering poverty and a lower probability of exiting poverty than non-Indigenous people. Changes in household size are the biggest triggers of poverty entry and exit for Indigenous people, accounting for almost 50% of poverty entries and 40% of poverty exits. Changes in household size are more prevalent for Indigenous than non-Indigenous people, due partly to higher birth and partnering rates, and to the greater proportion of Indigenous people who live in dynamic extended-family or multifamily households. Indigenous people who experience changes in household size have a greater likelihood of entering poverty and a smaller likelihood of exiting poverty than non-Indigenous people. The labour market plays a prominent role in triggering poverty transitions for Indigenous people. Among those in poverty, increased exposure to the labour market (either by having more household members working or higher labour earnings) results in a 62% likelihood of exiting poverty, while reductions in employment and labour earnings trigger around one-quarter of poverty entries for Indigenous people. Changes in private income, such as business and investment income, play a much smaller role in triggering poverty entries and exits for Indigenous than non-Indigenous people, largely because Indigenous people get far less of their income from such sources. The results suggest that Indigenous poverty is likely to be more persistent than non-Indigenous poverty, thus having a bigger negative impact on wellbeing. Greater exposure to the labour market and more access to other sources of private income are likely to reduce poverty incidence among the Indigenous population, but the dynamics of Indigenous households leave them at greater risk of persistent poverty, all other things being equal

Disagreement in Partners’ Reports of Financial Difficulty

We use unique data in which both partners report about household finances to demonstrate that there is often disagreement about whether the household has experienced financial difficulty in the past year. Four alternative explanations for this disagreement are tested using the data. The results indicate that disagreement may be related to the severity of the underlying material hardship rather than to gender differences or individual (as opposed to household) views of financial difficulty. We find only weak evidence that information asymmetries explain couple disagreement about financial difficulty. This implies that standard surveys which collect information about the household’s financial position from a representative individual may fail to completely characterize the nature of material hardship.Household Finances, Survey Methodology, Material Hardship

Disagreement in partners’ reports of financial difficulty

We use unique data in which both partners report about household finances to demonstrate that there is often disagreement about whether the household has experienced financial difficulty in the past year. Four alternative explanations for this disagreement are tested using the data. The results indicate that disagreement may be related to the severity of the underlying material hardship rather than to gender differences, information asymmetries, or individual (as opposed to household) views of financial difficulty. This implies that standard surveys which collect information about the household’s financial position from a representative individual may fail to completely characterize the nature of material hardship

Contemporary contestations over working time: time for health to weigh in

Non-communicable disease (NCD) incidence and prevalence is of central concern to most nations, along with international agencies such as the UN, OECD, IMF and World Bank. As a result, the search has begun for ‘causes of the cause’ behind health risks and behaviours responsible for the major NCDs. As part of this effort, researchers are turning their attention to charting the temporal nature of societal changes that might be associated with the rapid rise in NCDs. From this, the experience of time and its allocation are increasingly understood to be key individual and societal resources for health (7–9). The interdisciplinary study outlined in this paper will produce a systematic analysis of the behavioural health dimensions, or ‘health time economies’ (quantity and quality of time necessary for the practice of health behaviours), that have accompanied labour market transitions of the last 30 years - the period in which so many NCDs have risen sharply

SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues

Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types