Employment outcomes are poorer for trans and gender diverse Australians, and self employment is barely measured

Employment and income in Private Lives 3

In 2019, La Trobe University’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society conducted Private Lives 3, a national survey of the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ people. Of the 6,835 people who completed it, 1,506 were trans and gender diverse, and their responses on work differed markedly from those of other participants in the same survey.

Half of the cisgender men who took part, 50.6 per cent, were in full time work, compared with 30.9 per cent of trans women, 26.3 per cent of trans men and 25.0 per cent of non binary participants. The pattern was reversed for people without work, with unemployment or being unable to work reported by 31.2 per cent of trans women, 26.7 per cent of trans men and 26.3 per cent of non binary participants, against 14.3 per cent of cisgender women and 10.6 per cent of cisgender men.

Income followed the same pattern, with more than half of cisgender men, 56.3 per cent, reporting earnings of $1,000 or more a week, compared with 29.1 per cent of trans women, 26.7 per cent of non binary participants and 23.6 per cent of trans men. At the lower end of the distribution, 46.5 per cent of trans men, 46.3 per cent of non binary participants and 42.0 per cent of trans women reported earning less than $400 a week, against 19.9 per cent of cisgender men.

Private Lives 3 was an online survey promoted mainly through paid Facebook advertising, and Victoria and the ACT were over represented, so its figures describe the people who responded and cannot be taken to represent every LGBTIQA+ person in Australia, although the comparisons within the sample hold because the cisgender and trans participants were recruited in the same way and answered the same questions.

Findings from other Australian studies

Other Australian studies point in the same direction. A national community survey of 928 trans adults, conducted between September 2017 and January 2018 and published in LGBT Health in 2021, found that 19 per cent were unemployed even though 47 per cent held tertiary qualifications, and that 33 per cent reported employment discrimination because they were trans. That survey also relied on volunteers.

In January 2026, Monash University researchers published an analysis of the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which found that transgender and gender diverse participants worked fewer hours on average, although the university noted that smaller sample sizes limited the ability to detect all differences for that group.

In March 2026, the Australian Human Rights Commission published Equal Identities, its review of the experiences of trans and gender diverse people, drawing on 97 submissions and published research. Its conclusion on work is brief: "Discrimination persists in recruitment, career progression and workplace culture." The review also found that Australia lacks consistent population data on trans and gender diverse communities.

Data on self employment

The evidence on self employment is far more limited, although Private Lives 3 did ask about it and 7.9 per cent of all participants, or 539 people, reported being self employed. Its employment table reports that figure for the whole sample only, without separate figures for trans women, trans men or non binary participants, so it cannot show whether trans and gender diverse people are more or less likely than other LGBTIQA+ people to run their own business.

The single exception identified in this review also draws on HILDA. In a 2025 Australian Economic Review paper using the survey’s 2022 round, Mark Wooden, Taylor Ey and Roger Wilkins of the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Institute include a descriptive appendix table showing that 13 per cent of employed trans and gender diverse people aged 18 to 64 were self employed, against 15 per cent of cisgender men, 9 per cent of cisgender women and 12 per cent of all employed people in that age group. Read at face value, the table would put the rate close to that of the wider population, but the figure cannot support that conclusion. It rests on 175 trans and gender diverse people aged 18 to 64, of whom fewer were in work, and the authors do not discuss or test it. The table also does not separate trans women, trans men and non binary people, and it provides no information on why anyone became self employed.

Beyond that table, this review found no Australian source that reports self employment or business ownership among trans and gender diverse people, and none that examines the reasons for it. Two very different explanations are equally consistent with the employment data. In the first, people who have experienced discrimination in recruitment build work they control and no longer depend on an employer. In the second, people who cannot find a job take whatever self employed work is available, with little capital, irregular income and none of the protections that come with employment. A business started on an income of less than $400 a week is a very different undertaking from one started with savings and a network of former colleagues.

Both explanations probably apply to some people, but on the evidence identified in this review no one in Australia can yet say which is more common, although any policy response depends on knowing it. A program that directed trans people towards self employment as a remedy for workplace discrimination would rest on an assumption that the Australian evidence has not tested.

The 2026 Census

The 2026 Census can, for the first time, classify people aged 16 and over as cisgender or as transgender and/or gender diverse, using answers to separate questions on sex recorded at birth and gender. In 2021 the Census also asked whether people worked for an employer or in their own business, which forms the basis of its status in employment variable. Whether the two are published together, and at what level of detail, will depend on the data products the ABS releases and its rules for protecting small numbers.

Business registers and name history

ABN Lookup, the public register of Australian Business Numbers, can display an entity’s historical names together with the dates each was in use, so for an owner who has changed their legal name the record may include a former name. The Australian Business Register allows this history to be withheld. "You can have your historical name records withheld from ABN Lookup and data.gov.au," its guidance says, giving gender reassignment as an example and requiring a statutory declaration, and in most cases applicants are notified of the outcome by letter within 20 business days.

The national business names register, administered by ASIC, applies a stricter test and will hide a business name holder’s details only where there is a risk to personal safety or in other exceptional circumstances, and the business name, registration date, status and address for service of documents can never be hidden. ASIC suggests that holders use a post office box or an accountant’s address in place of a home address.

Disclosure to customers is a separate decision, and in Diversity Council Australia’s 2018 Out at Work study of more than 1,600 LGBTIQA+ workers, 22 per cent of trans or gender diverse workers openly talked about their identity with colleagues and only 10 per cent with clients or customers. Those respondents were employees, but the difference indicates that being out in business is a commercial judgement each owner makes for themselves, and that a register or program which assumes owners will disclose is likely to deter some of the people it is designed to reach.

Implications for researchers and program designers

Research and programs should report trans women, trans men and non binary people as separate groups. Private Lives 3 shows that these groups have different employment and income profiles, and a single LGBTIQA+ figure for self employment conceals those differences. The Human Rights Commission has recommended that demographic data be collected in line with the ABS standard for sex, gender and variations of sex characteristics, and any survey of business owners can adopt the same standard and report the groups separately where the numbers allow.

Even a reliable figure for trans self employment, which the HILDA table does not provide, would not establish whether self employment reflects opportunity or exclusion. That requires asking owners why they started their businesses, what work they had before and how they support themselves. The interviews planned for The State of LGBTQ+ Business in Australia are one means of putting those questions to trans and gender diverse owners directly, with a first point of contact that does not require anyone to disclose sensitive information.

Until that work is done, the Australian evidence shows lower rates of full time work and higher rates of unemployment among trans and gender diverse people, but it does not yet show what kind of work, including self employment, they move into.

Sources

Pride in Business publishes analysis on LGBTIQA+ economic participation in Australia. It is funded and published through Just Gold’s impact program.

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Employment outcomes are poorer for trans and gender diverse Australians, and self employment is barely measured

Employment and income in Private Lives 3

Findings from other Australian studies

Data on self employment

The 2026 Census

Business registers and name history

Implications for researchers and program designers

Sources

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