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The Contribution of Structural Shocks to Australian Unemployment[Note 1. Earlier versions were presented at the University of Melbourne, ...]
Author(s) -
Heaton Chris,
Oslington Paul
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
economic record
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.365
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1475-4932
pISSN - 0013-0249
DOI - 10.1111/1475-4932.00069
Subject(s) - unemployment , economics , structural unemployment , agriculture , labour economics , structural change , variation (astronomy) , macroeconomics , geography , physics , archaeology , astrophysics
In this paper dynamic factor analysis techniques are used to decompose changes in unemployment into industry sectoral and common components. Sectoral shocks are important, but the dominant causes of variation in unemployment are common to all industries. This is particularly the case for low–frequency fluctuations in unemployment. The pattern of the estimated sectoral shocks reflects the well–documented shift of employment from agriculture and manufacturing to services, and we find no evidence that microeconomic reform has contributed greatly to unemployment.