The Australian Labour Market in Booms & Slumps

19 October 2009

Emeritus Professor R.G. Gregory

Professor Gregory will look back and analyse employment, skill imbalances, hours worked and welfare interactions in each of the economic booms and slumps over the last four decades and ask is Australia making progress in overcoming what appear to be entrenched structural problems in the labour market? He will also look forward to the next economic upswing and conjecture whether labour market outcomes will be very different from past experiences? He will comment on the changing labour market outcomes for men and women.

Broad Topics: Business and Economics

Sub-topics: Economics

Areas: ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, University

Professor Gregory is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Through 1990 to 1993 he was principal consultant in a series of Aged Care Reviews for the Department of Community Services and Health. In 1998, he was a member of the committee that recommended the introduction of student income contingent loans, collected by the Tax Office. The scheme has been adopted by a number of other countries in addition to Australia. He was a member of the Committee on Employment Opportunities which prepared a Discussion Paper that acted as a precursor to the Government's 1994 Working Nation. He was also a member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia from 1985-1995. Professor Gregory is an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (1979). In 1996 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal. He has been President of the Economic Society of Australia and has been awarded the Economic Society Medal.

This was the Eighth Annual Sir Leslie Melville Lecture.

Part of the Toyota-ANU Public Lecture Series 2009