Is a Risk Index Approach to Unemployment Possible?

This paper examines the ways that productivity, personal characteristics such as birthplace and gender, structural factors and labour market history impact on the distribution of the burden of unemployment. It is shown that labour market history is a major explanator of unemployment outcomes in the Australian labour market. The results from the empirical analyses of unemployment outcomes are used to identify individuals at risk of being unemployed. When individuals classified as at risk of being unemployed are followed through time, it is found that they spend considerable time looking for work and have short working spells. This suggests a risk index approach may have considerable merit as a way of identifying the relative difficulty individuals experience in the labour market.