On the risk of unemployment: a comparative assessment of the labour market success of migrants in Australia

This paper analyses the ‘risk’ of unemployment of male immigrants to Australia relative to the native born using Wave 1 of HILDA. It exploits the more detailed information in HILDA on individual and parental characteristics that affect labour market outcomes than has been used in previous studies. The paper also benchmarks the results obtained with the HILDA data (referring to 2001) by comparing it with results from the 1990 Income Distribution Survey data. This approach permits analyses both of changes over time between 1990 and 2001, and of the robustness of results across model specifications based on limited and extensive data. The results show there is a clear disadvantage in the probability of finding employment for migrants with similar characteristics of a native born Australian in both time periods. Migrant relative disadvantage has not diminished in spite of greater emphasis on skilled migration in recent years. The extended HILDA model results show that the effects of variables commonly used previously are quite robust, but several additional correlates of individual unemployment are identified for migrant specific as well as general characteristics.