Notes on the data: Income support

Young people aged 16 to 21 receiving the Youth Allowance (other), June 2023

Policy context: Unemployment and its accompanying health effects are not distributed evenly through the population. Unemployment rates in Australia are highest among young people, being 6.7%, in the 15 to 19 year age group and 6.3% for those aged 20 to 24 years, compared with 2.2% for the population aged 25 years and over [1]. The experience of unemployment harms a young person's financial and psychological wellbeing, and these effects are felt more severely by those who experience long-term unemployment [2]. Furthermore, those who experience unemployment while young are more likely to be unemployed, have poor health and have lower educational attainment when they are older, than those who are not affected by unemployment while young [2].

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, Table 20a. Unemployed persons who looked for full-time and part-time work by Age; accessed 15 March 2023. Available from: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/labour-force-australia-detailed/latest-release#data-downloads
Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL). On the treadmill: young and long-term unemployed in Australia. Melbourne: BSL; 2014.

Notes: People receiving an ‘unemployment benefit' those receiving the Youth Allowance (other)¹ paid by the Department of Human Services (Centrelink) - are shown as proportion of the population aged 16 to 21 years.

A very small number of Local Government Areas (LGAs) have proportions in excess of 100%: these are clearly not accurate. The reason for this is not clear, although it may be the result of the address of the beneficiary not being allocated to the correct small geographical area by the correspondence files available; it may also reflect inaccuracies in the denominator (the population), as population estimates at the small area level for age groups can be unreliable, in particular for areas with proportionately high numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (as is the case for this income support payment). It also indicates that it is possible that percentages of less than 100% may also be overstated.

Population Health Area (PHA) data were derived from publicly-available data that were already suppressed at the Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2). Therefore, if a PHA included an SA2 with suppressed data, there could be an undercount in the PHA. However, the loss of counts due to the use of this data set was negligible (less than 0.01% lost). As State and Territory totals were also provided, data in the ‘Unknown’ data row in the Excel data workbooks are calculated as the difference between the sum of the PHA data and the State/Territory totals; these figures therefore include the sum of the suppressed SA2 cells.

Data cells with counts of less than five were suppressed (confidentialised).

¹ Youth Allowance (other) is comprised of unemployed people aged 16 to 21 years who are looking for full-time work, studying part-time and looking for work, or temporarily unable to work. It excludes full-time students and those undertaking an apprenticeship/ traineeship.

Geography: Data available by Population Health Area, Local Government Area, Primary Health Network, Quintile of socioeconomic disadvantage of area and Quintiles within PHNs, and Remoteness Area

Numerator: People aged 16 to 21 years in receipt of the Youth Allowance (other) from the Department of Human Services (Centrelink)

Denominator: People aged 16 to 21 years at 30 June 2022 (population data at June 2022 not available at time of publication)

Detail of analysis: Per cent

Source: Compiled by PHIDU based on data from DSS Payment Demographic Data, June 2023, available from https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/dss-payment-demographic-data, accessed 20 December 2023 for PHAs and data supplied by the Department of Social Services, June 2023 for LGA data; and Australian Bureau of Statistics Estimated Resident Population, 30 June 2022.