Indigenous people are far more likely to be discouraged from looking for work than other Australians. Understanding the determinants of what discourages particular workers has important implications for overcoming the labour force disadvantage faced by indigenous Australians. Despite the importance of this issue the most recent analysis of Indigenous discouraged workers is based upon data from the 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey. This paper uses data from the 2008 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey to estimate the determinants of being a discouraged worker and how they differ to those for the non-Indigenous population (estimated using data from the Multi-Purpose Household Survey).

Boyd Hunter is a Senior Fellow and Matthew Gray is a Professor at CAEPR, ANU.

Presentation slides and an MP3 podcast of the seminar are available for download below.