Improving Indigenous employment or entrenching labour market segregation? Using Artificial Intelligence and online job ads to evaluate employers’ Indigenous recruitment strategies

This study derives insight into changing demand for Indigenous workers by applying artificial intelligence to identify Indigenous-focused job postings. A natural language processing algorithm is used to classify a national database of online job ads according to whether they encourage Indigenous applicants, require Indigenous cultural capability, prioritise Indigenous candidates or are not Indigenous-focused. The analysis reveals significant growth in Indigenous-focused job postings but they are disproportionately concentrated in three sectors and one occupation group. In addition, although employers in sectors such as arts and recreation are advertising well-paid and high-skilled roles to Indigenous workers, there are other sectors where employers tend to advertise their more low-skill and low-wage roles to Indigenous workers. We also find that Indigenous focused job postings are not well-aligned with Indigenous career pathways. Our research offers practical insights for Indigenous employment policy and our methodology can also be applied to evaluate employers’ recruitment strategies for other target groups.