The Unemployment Imbalance Between Non-English-Speaking Migrant Women and Australian Born Women

Abstract

This study compares Non-English-Speaking migrant women’s unemployment situation with that of Australian born women, using the currently available 1% sample from the Australian 2016 Census data. A new general probit model is used to estimate the probability of unemployment for both groups combined, as well as for each of these groups separately to show the difference in unemployment rates between the two groups. Our contribution is to show how to estimate and test the imbalance in unemployment rates between the two groups. We show that the unemployment rate for Non-English-Speaking migrant women (7.2%) is significantly higher than for Australian born women (5.1%), but the gap is narrowing over time. We show that the unemployment rate for Non-English-Speaking migrant women increases when they are married and have children and when they have poor English proficiency and lower education levels. This implies that there is a significant higher probability of unemployment for Non-English-Speaking migrant women across human capital and demographic controls. We have discussed other dimensions of unemployment such as discrimination and cultural activities and shown that these are the main factors behind the relatively higher unemployment rate for Non-English-Speaking migrant women.