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A key thrust of labour market policy in Australia and many other western countries is that long-term unemployed people lack the personal motivation to engage proactively and successfully in the search for paid employment. In this paper we argue that the implementation of what are experienced as paternal workfare programs are counter-productive to achieving the official policy goal of improving self-efficacy and gaining paid employment. The empirical discussion presented in the paper is based on a semi-longitudinal study that tracked 75 long-term unemployed people in three different labour markets in Australia between 2005-2007. The study was funded by the Australian Research Council and Jobs Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that although migrants in general fare worse in the labour market, some migrant groups perform better than others (McAllister 1986; Evans and Kelley 1986; Kelly and McAllister 1984). Studies from the US have also shown that migrant workers working in the ethnic enclaves attain higher socioeconomic rewards compared to the immigrants employed in the secondary sector (Wilson and Portes 1980; Portes and Jensen 1989). Using data collected from the Survey of Issues in Multicultural Australia (1988), this paper reports that ethnic enclaves as a separate economy do not exist in the Australian labour market where migrants can obtain higher status or higher earnings. The paper concludes that the formation of ethnic enclaves as a separate economy needs much more than the establishment of ethnic owned enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A similar trend is apparent in Australian and Canadian programs to enhance work incentives and program effectiveness, but the Canadian provinces are increasingly insisting that low-income mothers with school-age children enter the workforce rather than accept social benefits to care for their children at home. There is no Canadian counterpart to the Sole Parent Pension or Parenting Allowance, although the provinces pay higher rates of social assistance to needy families than to individuals. Furthermore, there is little public support for the idea that low-income mothers should care for school-aged children at home at the taxpayer's expense. This paper discusses the similarities and differences in rhetoric and policies for low-income mothers, and seeks reasons for the stronger social support for mothering at home in Australia. Although the current discourse of economic rationalism suggests that enhancing work incentives and 'employability' will bring prosperity, this paper illustrates that neither paying mothers to care for their children at home nor pushing them into the workforce has reduced family poverty. To make employability programs more effective, governments need to deal with low female wages, the shortage and high cost of child care, and the lack of full-time permanent jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's ‘old-old’ population is growing even faster than the total aged population and despite improved incomes, living conditions, health risk behaviours and health care this will result in a concomitant increase in the numbers of older people with disabilities. This paper examines ABS 2003 survey data on the incidence of disability among older Australians and their need for, and utilisation of, formal and informal care, It uses this as a basis for projecting the incidence of disability among older Australians and the need for informal and formal care up to 2031. These indicate there is a major challenge since the aged care workforce has grown only slowly in Australia and is concentrated in the older working ages presaging a loss of workers through retirement. There needs to be a significant effort put into attracting workers to both the skilled and unskilled parts of the aged care industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs the Labour Market Accounts framework to explore how employment growth and commuting patterns interacted to determine changes in the spatial distribution of unemployment in Statistical Local Areas within the NSW GMR over the period 1996-2001. Separate regression models (Including control variables) for men and women provide estimates of the relative strength of the relationships between these labour market adjustment responses and the percentage local employment change. The results show that employment growth between 1996 and 2001 has elicited substantial changes in commuting behaviour. Men reveal greater in-commuting and migration responsiveness to employment growth. Unemployment changes in local areas of the Greater Metropolitan Sydney region have been swamped by commuting responses, potentially posing problems for locally targeted employment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]