Australians on youth allowance who’ve lost work because of lockdowns say they’re only scraping by and are considering stopping their welfare payments because receiving them makes them ineligible for the federal government’s COVID-19 emergency payments.
With more than 10 million Australians now in lockdown, Prime Minister Scott Morrison expanded the disaster payment to provide $600 and $375 to workers from the second week of lockdown.
However, workers who receive income payments already are excluded. JobSeeker recipients who had lost work told Crikey they were struggling to make ends meet because they had immediately lost income but got no additional support from the government.
No group of welfare recipients has been more affected by this decision than those receiving the youth allowance. In March 2021, 112,971 youth allowance recipients — a third of the total number of Australians receiving this payment — reported some income in the past two weeks. Younger workers are also disproportionately represented in retail and hospitality sectors and employed on a casual basis, meaning lockdowns are more likely to affect them.
Aimee Henry is a student at the University of Wollongong who’s been receiving youth allowance payments and has lost work at her casual job in a clothing store. Her youth allowance payment just covers her rent, andher pay from work covers her bills, groceries and other expenses.
“Since I’m on significantly reduced hours (one three-hour shift a fortnight, essentially), I’ve been relying on the small amount of savings I have and just forgoing things that aren’t super-essential,” she told Crikey in a message.
Because of the position she’s in, Aimee is worse off financially by staying on youth allowance than she would be if she discontinued her payments and sought the COVID disaster payment. She’s considered doing that but worries about how hard it will be to restart payments once the lockdowns finish.
“It was a struggle to get the amount of youth allowance that I do and I’m too stressed/worried that if I cancel it, it’s going to be even harder to go back to receiving it once the COVID-19 disaster payment ends, so I’d rather not risk it,” she said.
Other young Australians are in a similar position. The comments section of Services Australia’s post about the COVID disaster has been flooded with people on income support asking why they aren’t eligible, including some on youth allowance.
“This is really hard on students getting Austudy that worked as well, prior to COVID. $610 a fortnight doesn’t even cover rent,” one person said.
Young Australian advocacy group Think Forward spokeswoman Sonia Arakkal has called for the government to include youth allowance recipients.
“Young people have disproportionately been affected — we know that they’re the first to lose their jobs, the last to get vaccinated, and the cohort that will live with the long-term effects of wage scarring,” she said.
“Whether it’s the tax system, health insurance or the vaccine rollout, young Australians are consistently being asked to do the heavy lifting of supporting our nation — to take one for the team because of failures to ensure intergenerational equity in government policy.”
All through this Pandemic younger workers have been left behind. They are more likely to be deemed to be Casuals and didn’t fit into the rules around Job Keeper, and other supplements. The advent of an increased Job Seeker Payment was welcomed, but some younger people had already missed out for a fair while, and also with our Federal Government often demonizing anyone on the Dole, some didn’t bother. Then there were those in our Country on working Visas, this cohort is often also heavily slanted towards younger people, (backpackers, etc.). They were not eligible for any of this.
We have the largest casualized workforce in the developed world thanks to John Howard and the Coalition and their voter base.
Farmers, growers, hospitality industry are all big abusers and wage thieves and their Coalition came up with a scheme to provide them with expendable cheap foreign labour. In fact Howard, Vail and Downer went even further and like Pig Iron Bob courted the enemy, even worse they fed and bribed the enemy with whom they sent Aussie to die and be tortured and maimed on a cesspit of lies.
It wasn’t always like this as some of us remember.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-18/australia-tried-to-convince-its-allies-to-pursue-full-employment/100293040
I don’t think we are in fact the most casualized but we are right up there in the top 10 or so. Not anything to be particularly proud of. Its funny how those who think there is nothing wrong with part-time/casual work (as a stepping stone to higher paying more secure work joke! yoke!) .are themselves not prepared to accept part/time casual wok.
2019:
Australia had one of the highest rates of casual workers among the OECD’s 34-member countries
Australia has had one of the largest increases in underemployment across OECD countries since 2007
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-25/australia-sees-increase-in-casual-workers-ai-job-threats/11043772
“Young people with medium- and high-level education have seen increases in their probability of low-paid employment in Australia since 2006,” the report noted, adding this increase was larger than the OECD average.
The likelihood of non-employment for young people who have left education has increased in Australia since 2007 from 10.5 per cent to 10.9 per cent. But it remained lower than the OECD average of 13.2 per cent.
Labor leader Bill Shorten proposed laws allowing casuals to request permanent jobs after 12 months with the same company.
Workers would also be given the right to challenge an employer who “unreasonably refuses”.
Labor said, of the 2.6 million casuals in Australia, more than half have been with their current employer for 12 months and 192,000 for more than 10 years.
The party is also promising to boost the minimum wage, a plan that has drawn criticism from major business groups.
Dictator play book 101 is to “divide and conquer”! As a person of the non male gender who is not “in the cool demographic” I am human too; fact single moms past the “youth market” are actually the worst off! And we are the one’s generally wiping others’ bums, cleaning up their shii%%%, being blanket identified as “karen”… It is disgusting. How about stop the BS “Conversations” and call this inept and morally bereft govt. out. We all get equal treatment; plenty more rich and working
“young people” in the workforce” !!! How bout looking at the “young people” in the so called disruptive feudal systems who make their workers fight to a delivery task; to ride a dangerous bike in the rain; at break neck speed; or the middle men ( many young) who take the cream from the labour force casualised workers; what about the lack of openness to how a woman’s womb and child bearing is ignored and instead she is simply put on job seeker not job keeper.
Wake up stop the misogyny; its so old skool
What about the disabled on Jobseeker? Many, many people on Jobseeker are disabled with a partial capacity to work. This is because we cannot get or were kicked off DSP.
I earn around $520 a week from my job. Jobseeker pays me a very small top up (the main benefit being to be in the system if I fall ill again and can’t work, not for weekly payments). My total money per fortnight then is around $1250. Now I am down to around $740 as I can’t work and instead only get the full Jobseeker.
I’m grateful to be in the system and receive the $740 but I’m still way down from $1250. That’s a lot of money on a very small budget. Those of us on Jobseeker working part time as disabled are doing our bit. The Government told us we had to work so we do.
We have disabilities yet we still work. I work hard and I am a manager at my job, despite chronic illness. Now we get no acknowledgement.
Electoral fact, we may have a young (estimated) population but take out non citizens and our electoral rolls are dominated by middle aged and older; the latter cohorts are catered to by the LNP and legacy media while both youth and diversity have disappeared from socio political narratives.
The cartoon says it all
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2021/06/17/fruit-picking-exploitation-workers/