Issue Brief 14 / 1997

Employment strategies aimed at raising the economic status of Indigenous people are also implicitly committed to raising occupational status. This is because of the link between poor economic outcomes for Indigenous people and their over-concentration in unskilled jobs.

A key policy question then, is whether employment strategies have coincided with improved occupational status for Indigenous workers. Have Indigenous people become more similar in occupational profile to the general population over time? In considering these issues, this paper uses census data to examine changes between 1986 and 1991 in the occupations in which Indigenous people are employed.

How have jobs for Indigenous people changed?

Comparison of the occupational distribution of Indigenous people in 1986 and 1991 revealed:

• No great change in their disproportionate reliance on low-skilled, low status jobs. The figure shows that this was due to their continuing over-concentration in unskilled labouring jobs and as plant and machine operators, and their relative absence from professional, managerial and clerical jobs.
• In all other occupations, Indigenous representation was roughly equivalent to the national norm.
• This lack of movement towards greater equalisation in the labour market partly reflects growth of employment in the Community Development Employment Projects scheme since most workers in the scheme are classified by the census as labourers.

Distribution of Indigenous and non-Indigenous employment by broad occupational group, 1991.

Occupational group

1. Managers and administrators. 2. Professionals. 3. Para-professionals. 4. Tradespersons. 5. Clerks. 6. Sales, personal service workers. 7. Plant, machine operators and drivers. 8. Labourers and related workers.

Jobs for males and females

The distribution of employment across major occupational groups remained different for males and females.

• Indigenous females continued to mirror the gender difference in the wider labour market. They were concentrated in sales and personal services, and clerical jobs in both 1986 and 1991.
• Indigenous male workers continued to be over-represented in labouring jobs, and as plant, machine operators and drivers. Like other males, they still have relatively few sales, personal service and clerical jobs.

Employment change by occupation

Between 1986 and 1991 the number of Indigenous people in employment increased by around 14,000. Almost half of this growth was accounted for by very few occupations. Most notable here were cleaners, welfare professionals, child-care workers and labourers. For the rest of the workforce, finance managers, computing professionals and sales representatives were among the main growth occupations.

• The main occupations for Indigenous males in 1991 were the same as in 1986: truck drivers, labourers, clerks, cleaners, carpenters and joiners, sales assistants, vehicle mechanics, and factory hands.
• There was also little change in the main occupations of Indigenous females. These included cleaners, clerks, sales assistants, accounting clerks, child care, refuge and related workers, welfare para-professionals, teacher's aides and office secretaries.

Location and jobs

The difference between the jobs of Indigenous people and those of other workers depends largely upon where people live. In major urban areas differences are relatively minor (especially among females), except among professionals, para-professionals and sales and personal service workers. In other urban areas the gap is wider, and in rural areas even more substantial differences occur, particularly for males. While this difference declined between 1986 and 1991, rural areas changed the least.

Policy implications

One consequence of a lack of change in Indigenous occupational status is a growing deficit in the relative skills base of the Indigenous workforce. This is reflected in the fact that the ratio of Indigenous/non-Indigenous income from employment sources fell, according to the census, from 0.76 in 1986 to 0.71 in 1991.

Although these outcomes in occupational shift are discouraging, considerable variety exists. At a broad level, Indigenous females increasingly share the same jobs as females workers generally, particularly in major urban areas. However, on examining jobs in more detail, Indigenous males and females are often segregated into particular activities, partly because of their lower skills and partly because of the reliance on public and community sector jobs.

The concentration of Indigenous workers in low status jobs is of policy concern because the Australian labour market is projected to become more skilled in the near future at the expense of jobs at the lower end of the occupational scale. The share of the workforce accounted for by the lower skill categories of clerks, machine operators and labourers (which in 1991 accounted for 54 per cent of the Indigenous workforce) is projected to fall from 37 per cent of the total workforce in 1991 to 34 per cent by 2005. Over the same period, those in the higher skill categories will increase their share.

This Issue Brief summarised CAEPR Discussion Paper 104, 'Change in the relative occupational status of Indigenous workers, 1986-91', by J. Taylor and J. Liu published in December 1996. It was prepared by John Taylor, and edited by Linda Roach and Lynette Liddle.