Home topics news via pexels News News IBA and UTS to publish Australia’s first Indigenous pay gap measure later this year Yajush Gupta March 2, 2026 Indigenous wages are described as the single largest economic contribution First Nations people make to Australia. What’s happening: Indigenous Business Australia and the University of Technology Sydney’s Centre for Indigenous People and Work have announced a research partnership to calculate and analyse the pay gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Why this matters: According to the 2021 Census, Indigenous Australians aged 15 to 64 had an employment rate of 52%, compared with 75% for non-Indigenous Australians. Australia has had a national gender pay gap report since 2014. It has no equivalent for Indigenous workers. That is what Indigenous Business Australia (IBA) and the University of Technology Sydney’s Centre for Indigenous People and Work (CIPW) are setting out to fix. The two organisations announced a formal research partnership in late February 2026, with the specific goal of calculating and analysing the pay gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians for the first time. The joint research will build on existing data from Jobs and Skills Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, including the Skills Tracker linked dataset, which connects census records, tax office data, social services information and tertiary education records to generate detailed income estimates. Findings are targeted for release later in 2026. Professor Nareen Young, Associate Dean (Indigenous Leadership and Engagement) at UTS Business School and lead researcher at CIPW, was direct about