In a purely economic sense, unemployment in the Australian community is extremely costly. The costs of unemployment will be particularly pronounced if its social, psychological, and economic impacts are concentrated among long-term unemployed and if its effects spill over onto other family or community members. This paper analyses evidence from the 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Survery (NATSIS) to illustrate the point that such effects are potentially very large in Indigenous households with a substantial concentration of unemployed residents
