The latest labour force data is a beautiful set of numbers. When the Reserve Bank published their various scenarios for the economic recovery, nobody thought the labour market would recover faster than even their most optimistic forecast. But here we are, with unemployment back down to a not-good but still good-in-context 6.6%.
Meanwhile, records are being set in labour force participation. A higher proportion of Aussies are now working or looking for work than at any time since records have been kept. Forget the discouraged worker effect we normally talk about after a recession. This is testament to the optimism people have about Australia’s economic recovery.
We can only hope the optimism survives the winding back of JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments in March.
What?
A beautiful set of numbers?
The Participation Rate is a strange figure to pick without of context. We could look at the people participating in an unemployment line up outside CentreLink but that ‘rate’ would be nothing to crow about. We could have said the people looking forward work or in work (Participation Rate) was low before the late 1990s when woman were not looking for work or employed as they are now . We could have acknowledged that the December Participation Rate figures included school leavers.
I agree that 6.6% unemployed is better but not great, but if you do not mention the growth of jobs is in part time/ casual work, not full time work and the increase in total hours worked has not increased by much, then you are not informing people how to read the figures that politicians want to use to suggest they have done a great job.
This great job at marketing not a great job at reporting . I would have expected more from an Economics trained journalist.
Typos: no ‘of’ , ‘for’ not ‘forward’, no ‘is’. Would be good to have a comment edit function, especially for those of us participating via our phones!
So we need to reduce jobseeker back to impoverishment levels because it such a disincentive for job seeking when set at basic survival level? Or just because the Coalition and their supporters are punishers (in Manning Clark’s meaning) and their backers think you can never have enough labour discipline. That participation might be up because people had a breather and the resources to get back into the labour market, or because having now had some experience of what a higher income might mean they have an incentive renewed to seek it, will not be explanations heard in government or mainstream media rhetoric.
Ahh, ‘workforce participation’, such a lovely phrase, although it hides the fact that a great many of these ‘participants’ earn up to or less than the basic wage, often barely enough to pay for food and rent, let alone earn enough to save for a home loan or pay off a home loan. When will our govts start addressing that problem?