Labour markets

Econ 1002 Assignment 3 (due Week 4)

This assignment has two questions: Q1. Labour markets [1.5marks];

Q2. GDP [1.5marks]

Labour markets

We want to know whether full-time employment has grown faster or slower than part-time employment since 2000? This is where index numbers are useful.

a) Calculate the employment index numbers for all the years 2000 – 2012 for i) full-time employment; ii) part time employment; & iii) total employment.

Table 1 Employment in Australia, 2000-12, thousands

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force

b ) From the employment index numbers, what has been the trend in part- time employment compared with full-time employment? (50 -100 words)

c) What implications do these observations above have for the ‘grey economy’ (i.e. the informal labour market that is ‘cash in hand’ and ‘off the books’)? (50 -100 words)

GDP concepts

Open the following link from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It is the summary of Australia’s National Accounts for the December 2015 quarter (1 Oct 2015 – 31 Dec 2015).

a) What industry sectors were responsible for the increase in GDP over that period? (20 -30 words)

b) Look at the section ‘Prices in the National Accounts’. Refer to the table ‘Selected chain prices indexes‘. Note: chain price indexes are a time series of data that measure the impact of price change. What component/s of Aggregate Expenditure (i.e. C, I, G or NX) increased at the fastest rates? (20 -30 words)

c) What is the approximate percentage contribution of each component to total GDP in Australia? (You will need to do a google search of a recent period as the ABS link above does not have this information.) (20 -30 words)

d) Did the components that provided the greatest positive (or negative) contribution to GDP (from 2. d), grow fastest or slowest in terms of the reported ‘Selected chain prices indexes‘? (20 -30 words)