Unemployment

In this chapter, we analyse NESB migrant women's unemployment status and draw a comparison with that of Australian-born women. In the 1996 Census, unemployment is defined as persons aged 15 and over who were not employed during the reference week, and: had actively looked for full-time or part-time work at any time in the 4 weeks up to the end of the reference week.

Based on the 1% sample of the 1996 Census, we estimate that the unemployment rate for NESB women was 12.7%, compared with 7.6% for Australian-born women. The models developed in this chapter investigate the extent to which this difference can be explained by a range of human capital and demographic variables.

As in the previous two chapters, in this chapter we also use univariate probit models to examine the variables that make women more likely to be unemployed.¹