Employment Outcomes for Men and Women Following an Economic Downturn: Labour Underutilisation in Australia

Abstract

In Australia, as elsewhere, there has been continuing interest in understanding questions regarding unequal employment opportunities. While aggregate patterns provide a useful overview, it is insightful to consider employment outcomes across segmented markets. One such segmented market is between men and women, where it is widely understood that labour market engagement opportunities will differ. This paper provides an investigation of these uneven labour market outcomes. It presents an analysis of labour underutilisation for men and women using panel data, taking account of both individual-level supply-side factors together with the strength of the local labour market (demand side) and the performance of the broader macroeconomic environment. The result is an analysis that accounts for the impact of changing macroeconomy, local labour market conditions and men and women's employability assets.

Unemployment benefit eligibility requirements and perceived time pressure

“…Importantly, the research that examines the job search process of the unemployed worker and makes recommendations to the unemployed worker's job search behavior to improve their job search outcomes implicitly or explicitly assumes that unemployment is a result of job search behavior inadequacies and not a result of an overall shortage of jobs. If there is a shortage of jobs, providing recommendations to unemployed workers on how to improve their job search success will only lead to job queue shuffling (Baum and Mitchell 2008, 2010). With annual nationwide vacancy rates in our study period at no point above 2 percent and nationwide underutilization never below 10 percent, it is likely that an overall shortage of jobs existed throughout the study period.…”