CofFEE is active in public education and you can learn much about our work from our WWW pages we we endeavour to keep as current as is possible. You can subscribe on-line to our mailing list and receive our regular publications, including all of our working papers and occasional reports and submissions to various public enquiries. You will also receive information about our annual conference and other public gatherings that we organise.

CofFEE has an active research staff who work together with around 10 PhD students. Major research programs of public interest include our work on the Job Guarantee and public sector employment in OECD countries, the development of alternative labour market indicators (measures of underemployment and labour underutilisation), family friendly work arrangements, the development of CofFEE 1 - our large-scale macroeconometric model of the Australian economy, creating effective employment arrangements for youth with psychosis (ARC funded), examining job creation and job destruction dynamics (ARC funded), and extensive work on regional development and local labour markets employing spatial econometric and other spatial analytic techniques (ARC funded).

CofFEE is a participating member of the recently formed ARC Research Network in Spatially Integrated Social Science (ARCRNSISS). I am a member of the management committee of the Network and will convene (with Dr. Scott Baum, UQ) the Methodologies, Tools and Techniques paradigm forum on behalf of the Network members. Regular events will be held to develop the collaborative research arrangements within the Network. ARCRNSISS has been funded for 5 years from 2004-2009 by the Australian Research Council and builds Australia�s capacity and capability for innovative, collaborative, cross-disciplinary effort to investigate the impacts of change on the behaviour and well-being of people and the fortunes of places.

Our focus on regional labour markets and how effective they are in creating employment for the disadvantaged is a major research aim of CofFEE.

Some features of our work, which we hope can better inform public policy, include the development of the CLMI - the CofFEE Labour Market Indicators. These indicators provide a different view of the labour market than those typically available in the press. These indicators are updated each quarter and are based on our own research analysis. The CLMI will allow you to see just how badly the labour market is actually performing compared to the more optimistic picture provided by official ABS statistics.

We have also developed the CofFEE On-the-Fly Charts facility where all the CLMI can be charted using our dynamic graphing program. The menu options are available via the CLMI page.

We welcome community involvement in our activities and are available for public lectures. Our research staff regularly speak at professional and public policy conferences within Australia and abroad.

I hope we can all work together to restore full employment and equity in Australian society. We need to develop a culture of full employment which requires a bold public sector and a return to shared values. CofFEE is committed to providing research support to achieve this end and that task represents our major focus and purpose.

Bill Mitchell, Director

CofFEE advocates the implementation and maintenance of the Job Guarantee