Who benefits from growth?: disadvantaged workers in growing regions

Despite Australia enjoying unprecedented growth since the early 1990's, pockets of socio-demographic and regional disadvantage persist. Studies of disadvantaged workers often focus on regions experiencing employment decline; this paper instead explores how disadvantaged workers have fared in expanding labour markets. How much do workers at the bottom end of the labour market benefit from employment growth? Are policies that focus on the delivery of employment growth sufficient for determining labour market outcomes, or is continuing disadvantage a reflection of personal characteristics? At the aggregate level, high growth regions appear to have had more equitable rates of growth across occupations relative to low or medium growth regions. However growth in the late 1990s has not significantly altered the structure of the labour market disadvantage and the gap in the relative probabilities of unemployment between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged participants persists. This is particularly so for labour market participants with low English proficiency, in state housing, renting and non-metropolitan Australians, and the trend is more pronounced amongst females.