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For both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, males and females tended to havesimilar rates of unemployment (figure 3.5.9), although there was some variationbetween age groups (table 3A.5.3).The long term unemployed are defined as unemployed people who have beenwithout work for a year or more. People who have been unemployed for longperiods may experience greater financial hardship, and may have more difficultiesin finding employment because of the loss of relevant skills and employers’perceptions of their ‘employability’. The socioeconomic costs of unemploymentbecome greater for those who have been unemployed long term.Nationally in 2004-05, after taking into account the different age structures of theIndigenous and non-Indigenous populations:• Indigenous people were 5 times as likely as non-Indigenous people to have beenunemployed long term (4.7 per cent of the labour force compared to 0.9 percent).• Long term unemployment as a proportion of total unemployment was alsohigher than for Indigenous people than for non-Indigenous people (41.6 per centcompared to 27.4 per cent) (table 3A.5.6).• These results on long term unemployment need to be interpreted alongside dataon the labour force participation and CDEP participation of Indigenous people,which are likely to mask the unemployment and long term unemployment ofIndigenous people, particularly in remote areas (figure 3.5.1).52 OVERCOMINGINDIGENOUSDISADVANTAGE 2007