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The Social Costs of Indigenous Unemployment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

B.H. Hunter
B.H. Hunter*
Affiliation:
The Australian National University
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Abstract

In a purely economic sense, unemployment in the Australian community is extremely costly. This article analyses evidence from the 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey (NATSIS) to illustrate that social costs of unemployment are potentially very large. The unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed, fared worse than the employed on a range of social indicators. For example, among urban unemployed, the long-term unemployed: are more likely to have been arrested, are more likely to be taken from natural family, are less likely to have voted in a recent election, have lower participation rates in voluntary work, are less likely to be motivated and are more likely to have a long-term health problem. The unprecedented range of social indicators in the NATSIS means that the analysis provides an insight into the likely social costs of unemployment in the population at large, not just those for the Indigenous population.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , December 2000 , pp. 213 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2000

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank Professor Jon Altman, Mr Bill Arthur and Drs Matthew Gray and Tim Rowse for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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