Job surge leaves Aborigines behind

Most Aborigines of working age have no job, official figures reveal - and the proportion with a job fell in the two years to 2004, despite huge growth in employment.

Experimental estimates of indigenous employment, published for the first time by the Bureau of Statistics, show massive exclusion of Aboriginal people from the workforce, despite efforts by government to close the gap.

The bureau estimates that in 2004 just 47 per cent of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders aged 15 to 64 had a job. By contrast, 71 per cent of non-indigenous Australians the same age were in work - half as many again.

Close to half of all indigenous people of working age were not looking for a job, the bureau said. Of those in the labour market, 17 per cent were unemployed, three times the rate of other Australians (5.4 per cent).

The figures would be even worse if not for the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP), which pays Aborigines and Islanders in remote areas the equivalent of the dole for working on community projects.

Jon Altman, director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, said the figures suggested that roughly half of Aboriginal jobs in rural and remote areas were in CDEP programs. "Without CDEP, unemployment in remote Australia would be more like 70 per cent."

Professor Altman said policy makers need to look for more unorthodox solutions in remote areas. "We should take advantage of local opportunities, such as arts production, land management projects and coastal surveillance," he said.

"In a lot of these places, you can't get away from the fact that you need high government support to start creative opportunities. Policymakers say people should migrate to the cities, but the reality often is that they can't migrate, and they can't compete if they do migrate."

The bureau estimates that almost a third of working age Aborigines and Islanders live in big cities, but even there, only just over half have a job.

Professor Altman said indigenous people in the cities need "catch-up interventions" to help them acquire skills and education to compete in the urban jobs market.

The Minister for Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Amanda Vanstone, said the bureau cautioned that its data might not be reliable.

"It also covers the period before significant reforms were put in place by the Government, including the indigenous economic development strategy last November," she said.

The proportion of all indigenous people of working age with a job shrank from 50 per cent in 2002 to 47 per cent in 2004, the bureau said. More than 400,000 jobs were added to the economy, but indigenous employment shrank by 2000. In Victoria, only 40 per cent of indigenous adults had a job, compared with 45 per cent in 2002.

Copyright © 2006. The Age Company Ltd.