Editing Discouraged worker (section)

== Australia ==
In Australia, discouraged workers are recorded by the [[Australian Bureau of Statistics|Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)]] into a category of potential workers who are not actively seeking work. In order to be categorized as discouraged, individuals must a) want to work, b) be available to start working within 4 weeks, and c) are not actively applying for jobs because they are discouraged. According to ABS, there were 808,000 persons classified as unemployed in February 2021 plus an additional 1.157 million marginally attached to the labor force.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|date=2021-07-07|title=Potential workers, February 2021 {{!}} Australian Bureau of Statistics|url=https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/potential-workers/latest-release|access-date=2021-11-11|website=www.abs.gov.au|language=en}}</ref> The 113,000 discouraged workers fall into this marginally attached group.

The top three reasons that discouraged workers in Australia did not actively seek work in the week prior were:

# Considered too young or too old by employers
# No jobs in locality, line of work or no jobs at all
# No jobs in suitable hours<ref name=":2" />

The table below shows how there has been an overall increase in the number of discouraged workers in Australia, even with decreases from 2015 to 2016 and again from 2018 to 2019.<ref name=":2" /> As with many other countries, the number of discouraged workers increases during times of economic downturn which would explain the increases seen in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Evans|first=Andrew|date=2018-07-04|title=Evidence of the added-worker and discouraged-worker effects in Australia|journal=International Review of Applied Economics|language=en|volume=32|issue=4|pages=472–488|doi=10.1080/02692171.2017.1351530|s2cid=157977644|issn=0269-2171|doi-access=free}}</ref> Additionally, women are more likely to be discouraged workers than men in Australia.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last1=Hunter|first1=Boyd|last2=Gray|first2=Matthew|title=Indigenous Labour Force Status Re-visited: Factors Associated with the Discouraged Worker Phenomenon|url=https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.193590292395729|journal=Australian Journal of Labour Economics|volume=4|issue=2|pages=111–133}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
|+Australia Unemployed & Discouraged Workers<ref name=":2" />
!
!Unemployed
(Seasonally

adjusted)
!Discouraged
Workers

(all)
!Discouraged
Workers

(Male)
!Discouraged
Workers

(Female)
|-
|2015
|761,200
|106,400
|48,900
|57,500
|-
|2016
|717,500
|101,200
|42,400
|58,800
|-
|2017
|747,800
|100,300
|42,200
|58,100
|-
|2018
|734,700
|101,500
|42,900
|58,600
|-
|2019
|665,100
|90,100
|40,500
|49,600
|-
|2020
|695,700
|103,00
|45,800
|57,200
|-
|2021
|805,200
|113,000
|52,100
|60,900
|}
The [https://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/ Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research] (CAEPR) at The [[Australian National University]] has done further research of discouraged workers within Australia’s Indigenous population. As discussed by Hunter and Gray, Indigenous Australians are more than three times more likely to become discouraged than the Australian population as a whole.<ref name=":3" /> Similar to what is seen in the entire Australian population, Indigenous females experience higher rates of discouraged workers as compared to males.<ref name=":3" /> The top two reasons for becoming discouraged for the indigenous population as a whole were “childcare and other family responsibilities” and “studying/returning to studies.”<ref name=":3" />