The Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme has undergone significant changes in recent years there has been a large decline in participant numbers and substantial modifications to the way the program operates. This paper provides a brief overview of major changes to the CDEP scheme since 1994. Data from recent national social surveys of Indigenous Australians are used to explore two questions. The first is whether the recent changes to the CDEP scheme have changed the nature of CDEP jobs? The second is whether CDEP participants have better economic and social outcomes than the unemployed and those outside the labour force and whether this has changed since 1994?

The answer to the question implicit in the title of this paper is that the CDEP scheme is remarkably consistent in the nature of the jobs participants work in and the experiences it provides to workers, despite substantial changes in underlying policy settings. CDEP participation appears to be associated some small positive social, economic and health impacts relative to the unemployed, but CDEP workers tend to have much worse outcomes than those evident for the non-CDEP employed. The CDEP scheme has consistently provided (mostly) part-work that is embedded in Indigenous communities and seems to create ‘Indigenous friendly’ working environments that facilitate the maintenance of customary practices and culture—amongst other things, through the proximity to homelands. However, the ongoing policy contestation is whether CDEP is in some sense discouraging people from moving to potential jobs, some of which may be in other geographic areas.