Recent research has identified a substantial increase in Indigenous mainstream employment since the mid-1990s, but there has been relatively little regional analysis of such employment. The aim of this article is to build on this previous research using the 2006 and 2011 censuses to provide a more disaggregated descriptive analysis of changes in the character of labour market outcomes for Indigenous Australians aged 15–64 years. One of the new findings in the article is that the employment of Indigenous youth (i.e. those aged 15–24 years) in remote areas is different from that of Indigenous youth in non-remote areas, but older Indigenous residents of such areas are not very different in employment terms. Policy-makers thus need to pay particular attention to Indigenous youth employment in remote areas because the failure to address these differentials may lead to a foreclosure of future labour market options. Policy also needs to facilitate Indigenous engagement in the mainstream economy by assisting Indigenous people to be work-ready, especially in ensuring that Indigenous skills are matched with employer demands, and expediting employment by informing businesses on how to provide an Indigenous-friendly workplace.

Research about the demand for Indigenous labour and the relationship of Indigenous workers to their employers is relatively scarce. Even less is known about Indigenous businesses. Supply Nation defines an Indigenous business as those where Indigenous stakeholders hold majority equity, but some researchers have argued that this definition could be relaxed to include businesses in which Indigenous people hold only half the equity in the enterprise. This article uses data from the Industry Capability Network Queensland, which has collected basic business information on a large number of businesses operating in Queensland. The findings reveal that Indigenous businesses have substantially better outcomes for Indigenous employment than non-Indigenous businesses – a result that holds even when the definition of Indigenous business is relaxed. The article also documents how Indigenous employment is concentrated in larger businesses, in particular industry sectors. Non-Indigenous micro-businesses employ relatively few Indigenous workers, and future research can usefully explore why this is the case. To understand the issues involved, it will be necessary to collect multi-level data that link detailed information on employers and employees (including a substantial sample of Indigenous workers).

There have been a number of labour market programs that have attempted to increase rates of employment of Indigenous Australians by influencing job search behaviour. This paper provides the first ever baseline of data on the job search behaviour of Indigenous job seekers and how it compares to the job search of non-Indigenous job seekers. Clear differences between the job search behaviours of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are apparent. Indigenous Australians rely disproportionately on friends and relatives as a source of information about jobs, although their networks tend to have less employed members, and therefore are less effective than non-Indigenous networks in securing employment. Non-Indigenous job seekers are also more likely to use more proactive search methods than are Indigenous job seekers.