UNLUCKY AUSTRALIANS - LABOR-MARKET OUTCOMES AMONG ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS

It is impossible to paint a stronger contrast in Australian life chances than the gulf separating Australian Aborigines from European settlers of Anglo-Celtic ancestry. The contrast in their life chances is stark. This article describes how Aborigines fare relative to descendants of the Anglo-Celtic majority. Taking the latter as a standard against which to measure Aboriginal disadvantage, we examine three labour market outcomes: unemployment, job status and hourly earnings. In making both gender and ethnic comparisons we show that Aborigines suffer extremely high risks of unemployment. In the early years of labour market experience an unmarried Aborigine with average schooling and no qualifications has less than a fifty-fifty chance of being employed. This risk is over double that for an Anglo-Celt. Even after twenty-five years of experience Aboriginal rates fail to converge to those for Anglo-Celts. Among those fortunate enough to find jobs, the standard meritocratic model does not work well in accounting for the Aboriginal experience. The explanatory variables we use are less effective in explaining individual differences in Aboriginal attainment, partly because they are confined to a narrower range of jobs and partly because their schooling and experience do not affect outcomes as strongly. While post-school qualifications improve outcomes among all groups, very few Aborigines have any such qualifications. Aboriginal women get better jobs than Aboriginal men, who are concentrated in unskilled work. Like Anglo-Celtic and other women, Aboriginal women are mostly employed in routine white-collar work. With regard to hourly earnings, women and Aborigines get lower returns to their schooling and qualifications. Our findings point to the existence of a 'glass ceiling' that compresses women's earnings. Thus, men employed in large firms do better than women because large firms usually have well-defined internal markets and career paths, at least for men. On the other hand, public employment benefits women more than men because public authorities have been leaders in affirmative action programmes. Women and Aborigines also get lower financial returns to their socio-economic status because they are concentrated in jobs with poor promotion prospects. The main causes of these ethnic and gender inequalities are occupational segregation, weak attachment to the formal labour market, inadequate promotion and the inferior educational experiences of Aborigines.