IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uow/depec1/wp04-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hidden Unemployment and Older Male Workers

Author

Abstract

A number of policy reforms have recently been announced by the Commonwealth government to encourage greater labour force participation by older people in the context of an ageing society. These policy reforms are generally supply side in orientation such as the removal of the Mature Age Allowance, or restrictions to the Disability Support Pension. In this paper it is argued that these pensions have historically been used to accommodate otherwise unemployed older male workers. A number of methods are used to quantify the level of hidden unemployment within the older male population over recent decades. Estimates of adjusted unemployment rates, which include hidden as well as official unemployment, reveal a very dramatic picture of unutilised older male labour beneath relatively modest official unemployment rates. It is argued that without complementary employment policy addressing the labour demand side these policy reforms will achieve little except to reveal the previously high levels of hidden unemployment in official unemployment statistics.

Suggested Citation

  • O'Brien, Martin, 2004. "Hidden Unemployment and Older Male Workers," Economics Working Papers wp04-02, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp04-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@commerce/@econ/documents/doc/uow012162.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Breusch, T S, 1978. "Testing for Autocorrelation in Dynamic Linear Models," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(31), pages 334-355, December.
    2. R. G. Gregory & P. J. Sheehan, 1973. "The Cyclical Sensitivity of Labour Force Participation Rates," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 6(2), pages 9-20, July.
    3. Ross S. Guest & Ian M. McDonald, 2000. "Population Ageing and Projections of Government Social Outlays in Australia," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 33(1), pages 49-64, March.
    4. Hansen, Bruce E., 1992. "Testing for parameter instability in linear models," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 517-533, August.
    5. George Argyrous & Megan Neale, 2001. "Labor Market Disability: Implications for the Unemployment Rate," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 12(2), pages 263-284, December.
    6. Martin J. O’Brien, 2000. "Older male labour force participation: the role of social security and hidden unemployment," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 4(3), pages 206-223, September.
    7. Kiefer, Nicholas M. & Salmon, Mark, 1983. "Testing normality in econometric models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-2), pages 123-127.
    8. O'Brien, Martin, 2003. "A Unit Record Analysis of Older Male Labour Force Participation," Economics Working Papers wp03-17, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marc Lavoie & Gabriel Rodriguez & Mario Seccareccia, 2004. "Similitudes and Discrepancies in Post-Keynesian and Marxist Theories of Investment: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 127-149.
    2. Robert Dixon & John Freebairn & Guay Lim, 2007. "Time-varying equilibrium rates of unemployment: an analysis with Australian data," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 10(4), pages 205-225.
    3. MacKinnon, James G, 1992. "Model Specification Tests and Artificial Regressions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 102-146, March.
    4. Sharma, Purushottam & Meena, Dinesh Chand & Anwer, Md. Ejaz, 2024. "Food Price Inflation in India: Determinants and their Asymmetric Impact," IAAE 2024 Conference, August 2-7, 2024, New Delhi, India 344332, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).
    5. Edgar A. Peden & Mark S. Freeland, 1998. "Insurance effects on US medical spending (1960–1993)," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(8), pages 671-687, December.
    6. Charles G. Renfro, 2009. "The Practice of Econometric Theory," Advanced Studies in Theoretical and Applied Econometrics, Springer, number 978-3-540-75571-5, July-Dece.
    7. Jason Allen & Robert Amano & David P. Byrne & Allan W. Gregory, 2009. "Canadian city housing prices and urban market segmentation," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(3), pages 1132-1149, August.
    8. Marc Poitras, 2004. "The Impact of Macroeconomic Announcements on Stock Prices: In Search of State Dependence," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(3), pages 549-565, January.
    9. Zia-Ur- Rahman, 2019. "Influence of Excessive Expenditure of the Government in Perspective of Interest Rate and Money Circulation Which in Turn Affects the Growing Process in Pakistan," Asian Journal of Economics and Empirical Research, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 6(2), pages 120-129.
    10. Diebold, Francis X. & Rudebusch, Glenn D., 2023. "Climate models underestimate the sensitivity of Arctic sea ice to carbon emissions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    11. repec:wyi:journl:002087 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, 2002. "The Impact of Banking Crises on Money Demand and Price Stability," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 49(3), pages 1-1.
    13. Eckhard Hein & Christian Schoder, 2011. "Interest rates, distribution and capital accumulation -- A post-Kaleckian perspective on the US and Germany," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(6), pages 693-723, November.
    14. Colin C. Williams & Ioana Alexandra Horodnic, 2017. "Tackling Bogus Self-Employment: Some Lessons From Romania," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(02), pages 1-20, June.
    15. W. S. Navin Perera, 2018. "An Analysis of the Behaviour of Prime Lending Rates in Sri Lanka," Asian Journal of Economics and Empirical Research, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 5(2), pages 121-138.
    16. Kartal, Mustafa Tevfik & Ghosh, Sudeshna & Adebayo, Tomiwa Sunday, 2023. "Renewable energy effect on economy and environment: The case of G7 countries through novel bootstrap rolling window approach," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    17. Branstetter, Lee & Chatterjee, Chirantan & Higgins, Matthew J., 2022. "Generic competition and the incentives for early-stage pharmaceutical innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(10).
    18. Matthias Hartmann & Helmut Herwartz & Yabibal M. Walle, 2012. "Where enterprise leads, finance follows. In-sample and out-of-sample evidence on the causal relation between finance and growth," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(1), pages 871-882.
    19. Checo, Ariadne & Mejía, Mariam & Ramírez, Francisco A., 2017. "El rol de los regímenes de precipitaciones sobre la dinámica de precios y actividad del sector agropecuario de la República Dominicana durante el período 2000-2016 [The role of rainfall regimes on ," MPRA Paper 80301, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Yu Wang & Haicheng Shu, 2019. "Evaluating the Performance of Factor Pricing Models for Different Stock Market Trends: Evidence from China," Working Papers 2019-10-10, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    21. Masaru Chiba, 2023. "Robust and efficient specification tests in Markov-switching autoregressive models," Statistical Inference for Stochastic Processes, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 99-137, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp04-02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Siminski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuowau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.