IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uwa/wpaper/22-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Australian labour market in 2021

Author

Listed:
  • Elisa Birch

    (Economics Department, Business School, The University of Western Australia)

  • Alison Preston

    (Economics Department, Business School, The University of Western Australia)

Abstract

This article provides a review of the Australian labour market in 2021. It describes patterns of employment, unemployment and other key labour market outcomes in the year, including wages. In the year to September 2021, total employment increased by 2.6% for males and 2.2% for females, driven by a growth in full-time employment. While most labour market indictors returned to their pre-pandemic levels in 2021, young adults, particular men, casual employees, the self-employed were most disadvantaged by COVID-19. New South Wales and Victorian residents were similarly adversely affected. Notwithstanding inflationary fears, in the year to September 2021 headline inflation increased by 3.0% and the wage price index by 2.2%, rendering a fall in real wages during the year. Despite record low unemployment at year’s end and a positive economic outlook for 2022, the future remains unclear.

Suggested Citation

  • Elisa Birch & Alison Preston, 2022. "The Australian labour market in 2021," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 22-02, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwa:wpaper:22-02
    Note: MD5 = a447e198a2fe90dcc4048e8feb748856
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ecompapers.biz.uwa.edu.au/paper/PDF%20of%20Discussion%20Papers/2022/DP%2022.02_Birch%20and%20Preston.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kadir Atalay & Woo-Yung Kim & Stephen Whelan, 2014. "The Decline of the Self-Employment Rate in Australia," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 47(4), pages 472-489, December.
    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. Inga Laß & Mark Wooden, 2019. "Non-standard Employment and Wages in Australia," RBA Annual Conference Papers acp2019-04, Reserve Bank of Australia, revised Jul 2019.
    2. Mark Wooden, 2021. "Job Characteristics and the Changing Nature of Work," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 54(4), pages 494-505, December.
    3. Pekkala Kerr, Sari & Kerr, William, 2020. "Immigrant entrepreneurship in America: Evidence from the survey of business owners 2007 & 2012," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(3).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employment; unemployment; underutilisation; wages; younger workers; COVID-19; labour market.;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:uwa:wpaper:22-02. 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: Sam Tang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuwaau.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.