The unemployment numbers yet again seem to fit perfectly with the Government’s political narrative.
The unemployment rate may not have risen, confirming Australia’s miracle economy status, but it’s not too hard to see the bad news: full-time employment down by more than 30,000, part-time up by only just over 3000.
Only a 0.3% fall in the participation saved us from higher unemployment as measured by the ABS. That’s a serious fall in participation and the worst we’ve seen for a while. Labour underutilisation was also up again.
So the economic story continues to be: good news, but things are still fragile. Too fragile, the Government will say, to risk any cut back in the stimulus currently rolling out. And they’d be right.
In the first good news for a while in NSW, unemployment remained steady there at 6.1%, although there was a fall in the participation rate; Victoria suffered a sizeable increase from 5.9% to 6.3%, overtaking NSW for the first time, although there was a big jump in participation there; Queensland fell slightly to 5.5% and SA edged up to 5.8% but saw a big fall in participation. The Tasmanians had a full 1% rise to 5.1%.
WA, however, seems to be drifting back to boom economy status with both a rise in participation and a 0.3% fall in unemployment to 5.4%.
Still, even on their worst readings, the data shows Australia is still way, way ahead of the rest of the world. Unemployment is a pretty useful indicator of human misery, and we’re keeping it under control. That is unambiguously a good thing.
Meanwhile, Gary Morgan and Michele Levine write: The August ABS unemployment estimate of 5.8%, released today, is unchanged from last month — a similar result as announced by Roy Morgan last week (7.4%, down 0.2%).
However, for the first time the ABS has released a monthly underemployment estimate. Roy Morgan Research has been calling for the release of these figures for years – and releasing our own monthly underemployment estimate for almost a year as the economic slowdown demanded closer attention be paid to the state of the Australia labour force.
The Roy Morgan unemployment and underemployment estimate for August of 14.4% (1.66 million) shows too many Australians are looking for more work – many more than has been understood by the public, politicians and the media in the past.
Today’s release by the ABS of the August “underutilisation rate” of 13.9% shows for the first time that the ABS has started to accurately report Australia’s true unemployment and underemployment situation. Australia cannot get out of the recession without this figure dropping dramatically. For the RBA to put up interest rates at this time would be “economic suicide”.
Today’s ABS figures are a “giant leap” forward for understanding the Australian labour market — it is time that Australia’s politicians started a real debate on how to find jobs for more than 1.6 million Australians looking for work or more work!
What is the major concern for Australia is for the 13th month in a row the ‘hours worked’ has dropped — in August down by another 5.8 million hours a month!
Potentially a dumb question (remember, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people), but do all countries measure unemployment the same way? And if not, is there any validity at all in comparing figures?
This “participation” thing all sounds very dodge as well.
If you look at John Williams Shadow Government Statistics site (www.shadowstats.com) the real unemployment rate in the US , that is before the measure was changed by Clinton, is now 21% ; so I guess that makes our 14% look a little better but nevertheless we are hiding the reality of the situation every bit as much as the Americans and fortunately we still have optimism. They don’t.
Very revealing interview on abc RN with Gary Morgan pre 7 am this morning.
Only there is a flaw in the gem of an argument Morgan raises, which who knows, may make it all the more ornamental in terms of public policy and public interest (in both senses).
That flaw is this: People working only 3 days out of 5 “is a tragedy” said Roy Morgan hero of “private industry” to borrow his phrase.
But is it? Really? I don’t actually buy that on so many levels. Okay it’s just anecdote but there was the guy on one of the political talky shows in a car camper in a USA parking lot – oh actually think it was Australian 60 Minutes. He said yes GFC has massively disrupted his family life and financial security. But he also said this – we are happier. Our family is stronger. We are going to survive.
Now between those two extremes is a whole lot of life truth of somekind and working for da man full time I don’t think is quite where western civilisation really needs to be heading. What really is the point of all these powerful machines to do stuff and just work yourself stupid? Indeed how can a democracy actually function if for 5 days you are run ragged. 1 day to recover and 1 day for family. It’s institutional madness, and like the GFC something has to give. And surely it is the growth fetish.
That’s where Roy betrays his generational bias. By all means measure the hours worked, but then go deeper and unpack the values and wisdom or otherwise implicit within that measure too.
There has been a lot of unresolved assertion about the causes and consequences of different participation rates and hours and weeks of employment in different countries and who are happier (not to mention whether happiness, however defined or apprehended, is the ultimate test) and there have been conflicting studies and reports which makes it hard to be dogmatic, but I, whether you think of me as a retired person being supported by those working in Australia (and elsewhere because that affects, inter alia, the value of our resource exports) or a semi-retired investor or just a working taxpayer and modest recipient of some churn back, would like as many of my fellow Australians as possible to be working and (a) paying taxes – as much as possible for as many hours work as possible, or (b) not receiving unemployment or disability benefits, and (c) not having as much time or inclination to commit crimes. Do I not speak for most of us, at least when considering what we know pretty well, namely our own self-interest?
So, the underemployment, which is not new news, is bad, arguably worse than lower participation rates, but what about the another statistic which has grown enormously in the last 40 years, namely the number of people on disability and other social welfare payments which are alternatives to their earning some kind of living? And that’s without getting on to the necessary lifting of the age of pensionable retirement since we now don’t die with suitable timeliness after our last day at work.
The point, in case I have wrapped it up too much, is that we already had a considerable problem of idle people from, particularly from pseudo-disability, and, also, that the underemployment problem (at varying levels of discomfort to the underemployed – including no discomfort) is such an established phenomenon that I doubt if it needs to be much reduced, as you, Bernard suggest, to be able to say the recession is over.