For over 200 years, First Nations people have created our own opportunities to participate in labour markets. Participating through indentured labour systems and being forced to train on Indigenous missions, concealing identity in order to participate – these decisions were made to contribute and provide for their families, in recognition of the new, building economy around them.

This self-determinist understanding challenges the accepted economic and political paradigm of Indigenous contributions. Instead, it provides a precursor to the growing Indigenous middle class. It also means that attracting and retaining Indigenous employees will be a growing imperative for Australian workplaces.

Recent forecasting by Indigenous Business Australia (IBA) supports the urgency of better understanding the Indigenous employment lifecycle. In their recent submission to the Treasurer’s Economic Reform Roundtable, IBA found that Indigenous people could make up 4 to 7 per cent of the Australian population in two decades. Significantly, a large portion of that population will be ready to join the workforce, as part of the only growing youth demographic in Australia.

The question is, are Australian businesses ready for one in fifteen of their workers to identify as Indigenous?

In early 2025, the University of Technology Sydney’s Jumbunna Institute and Business School came together to form the Centre for Indigenous People and Work (CIPW). CIPW is the first of its kind in the world. Its purpose is to generate meaningful workplace change by prioritising and centring Indigenous voices, and by conducting rigorous Indigenous-led research, consulting and advocacy to reclaim the Indigenous employment narrative. CIPW’s vision is bold – but it is deeply embedded in the history of our participation in labour markets.

Our role at CIPW is to (re)narrate the Indigenous employment narrative through our voices. One of the assumptions we often faced in the early establishment of our practice was that Indigenous people did not want to talk about work. In 2020, we launched our flagship employment research, Gari Yala, which had over 1,000 Indigenous respondents. In 2025, having just closed our most recent survey, we have had almost 1,200 Indigenous people share their workplace experience with a trusted Indigenous entity. Indigenous people want to talk about their experiences, and the growing response rates highlight the importance of creating these platforms.

However, the Gari Yala data demonstrates that our workplaces have work to do. While almost 80 per cent of respondents noted that it was important for them to identify as Indigenous at work, 28 per cent said that they work in culturally unsafe workplaces, while 39 per cent carry a high cultural load to educate and inform their co-workers. This research pointed to the lack of support within workplaces when Indigenous people experienced racism and spoke to the impacts on retention due to these challenging work environments.

New research by Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) also speaks to the impacts of pay inequity facing First Nations women. In their report, “New perspectives on old problems”, JSA found that First Nations women earn on average 35 per cent less than average Australian male workers. This pay gap is the highest of all other cohorts in Australia and emphasises the specific need for intersectional lenses when conducting diversity research. JSA’s research also found that just over half (53 per cent) of First Nations workers were in moderately, highly or almost completely female-dominated occupations, compared to just under a third (31 per cent) of the total workforce.

The pay gap experienced by First Nations women further supports a literature review that CIPW conducted for the Fair Work Commission on Indigenous women’s work in the community-controlled health sector. This research found a paradox between, on the one hand, the importance of First Nations health workers for providing safe, culturally appropriate and accessible health care, but on the other hand, the systemic undervaluation of wages based on historic, social and political factors resulting from the ongoing impacts of colonisation.

The research highlighted the need for truth-telling and the centring of Indigenous voices in the narration of this care work. It is critical to remember that forced labour, stolen wages and indentured work for First Nations women in Australia's recent history is linked to their culturally specific skills in Aboriginal communities being undervalued when it comes to wages.

The underlying narrative of these data sets and trends demonstrates that Australian businesses have a long way to go in creating culturally safe and respectful workplaces for Indigenous people where their careers can flourish. It also supports the need for First Nations people to reclaim the Indigenous employment narrative and conduct more self-determined research. Pivotal to this reclaiming of the narrative is understanding the intersectionality of Indigenous lived experience in terms of gender, disability, class and sexual orientation.

Earlier this month, we watched with pride as the Race Discrimination Commissioner, Giri Sivaraman, stated in his National Press Club address, “There can be no racial justice in Australia without justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”. This highlighted the importance of addressing the root cause of racism in Australia, noting that it stems from the original violence against Indigenous people.

Building on the Commissioner’s approach, CIPW is supportive of his calls to introduce a positive duty on workplaces in respect to racism and conducting a Racism@Work Inquiry. Similar to the work undertaken in relation to sex discrimination, the introduction of legislative provisions to create racism-free workplaces would support workers to have safe, respectful and inclusive experiences at work. In parallel, the Racism@Work inquiry promotes truth-telling for workplaces and, if listened to deeply, would recommend further changes for greater safety and inclusion at work.

We believe this work, and an emphasis on First Nations experiences, is critical given the trend of racism at work faced by Indigenous people, a growing youth demographic, the gender pay gap faced by Indigenous women of 35 per cent and the historic payment paradox leading to the undervaluation of Indigenous labour.

Professor Nareen Young is the Director for the Centre for Indigenous People and Work, Associate Dean, Indigenous Engagement and Leadership at the UTS Business School and Professor, Indigenous Policy (Indigenous Workforce Diversity) at the Jumbunna Institute. Nareen is one of Australia’s leading and most respected workplace diversity practitioners, thinkers and influencers. Nareen was first a trade union official and represented women’s employment interests on the executives of both the ACTU and Unions NSW during this time. She led and managed two Diversity peak bodies (Diversity Council Australia and NSW Working Women’s Centre), with enormous impact and success for nearly 15 years and was then Director and Employment Lead at a large Indigenous consulting firm for three years. She is an Aboriginal descendant from the Sydney area through the Fowler family.

Joshua Gilbert is the Assistant Director of the Centre for Indigenous People and Work, with over a decade of experience across Indigenous employment consulting and research. Josh is a socially and commercially focused Worimi man with extensive experience in Indigenous affairs, environmental sectors and sustainable agriculture, advocating for Indigenous identity and truth-telling. Josh is pursuing a PhD on Indigenous modernity through agriculture at Charles Sturt University and he has just launched a book entitled “Australia's Agricultural Identity: An Aboriginal Yarn”.

 Tanya Hosch has a long and distinguished history in Australian Indigenous policy, advocacy and governance and is an accomplished public speaker. Tanya is the Chair for the Centre for Indigenous People and Work, a Co-Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Group of the National Australia Bank and is a Board Director of Circus Oz, and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. She was a member of the Referendum Council that led the process and final recommendation that resulted in The Statement from the Heart in May 2017.

Image credit: Bim