Dynamics of household joblessness in Australia 2001-2007: final report prepared for the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations under the Social Policy Research Services Agreement.

This project investigates the dynamics of household joblessness in Australia using the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, Waves 1 to 7. Previous work by the Melbourne Institute (Headey and Verick, 2006) is used as the starting point. It is different from the recently published Whiteford (2009) report in that this report’s focus is broader than families with children and the analysis is multivariate. It aims to estimate the effect of potential factors while controlling for the effects of a broad range of other factors. In addition, it applies a dynamic model allowing for persistence in joblessness from year to year and controlling for individual-specific effects. Finally, the focus of most analyses in this report is on the individual and his or her probability of being a member of a jobless household. This report is different from any unpublished DEEWR reports using Centrelink Administrative data, the Research and Evaluation Database (RED).1 While the seven waves of HILDA inform on a variety of jobless households from a large sample survey, RED represents the total income support population including a demographic profile of all jobless families within this population.