It is widely assumed that contingent forms of employment, such as fixed-term contracts, labour-hire and casual employment, are associated with low quality jobs. This hypothesis is tested using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a nationally...

Suspension from school is a commonly-used, yet controversial, school disciplinary measure. This paper uses unique survey data to estimate the impact of suspension on the educational outcomes of those suspended. It finds that while suspension is strongly associated with educational outcomes, the...

We use unique survey data linked to nearly a decade of administrative welfare data to examine the relationship between early marijuana use (at age 14 or younger) and young people's educational outcomes. We find evidence that early marijuana use is related to educational penalties that are...

The debate over whether contingent (and typically more precarious) employment acts as a bridge to permanent employment, or as a trap, has tended to focus on transitions rather than longer-run pathways. This approach cannot accurately identify indirect pathways from contingent to permanent...

This paper studies the prevalence and nature of zero-hours contracts (ZHCs) in the UK labour market. The headline count of ZHC workers based on the Labour Force Survey has long underestimated and continues to underestimate the number of workers in ZHC or ZHC-like jobs. ZHC jobs and workers are...

This paper examines employment and hours impacts of the 1999 introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) and the 2016 introduction of the UK National Living Wage (NLW) in Northern Ireland (NI). NI is the only part of the UK with a land border where the NMW and NLW cover those working on...

Ethnic and religious differentials in labour market outcomes within many countries have been remarkably persistent. Yet one very well-known differential – the Catholic/Protestant unemployment differential in Northern Ireland – has largely (although not completely) disappeared. This...

The introduction of the Australian Paid Parental Leave scheme in 2011 provides a rare opportunity to estimate the labour supply and employment impacts of publicly-funded paid leave on mothers in the first year post-partum. The almost universal coverage of the scheme coupled with detailed survey...

The increasing numbers of workers in employment with little to no job security, so-called precarious employment, has led to a range of concerns over worker outcomes. A particular focus is the effect of instability on health in general, and particularly, mental health. We provide new evidence on...

A range of evidence suggests that non-standard jobs, including fixed-term and other temporary jobs such as casual jobs, pay lower wages than more standard, permanent jobs, even after controlling for differences in worker and job characteristics. A recent literature suggests this is also the case...