Job figures

I know what you're saying. That happened to graduates in my age group too 25 years ago. At least you've got a job though - and you're investing. Things will definitely get better. And no-one's career really kicks off in their twenties. Your twenties are not to be taken too seriously!

 

True.

Dimming of the light on the hill

"MORE than 300,000 teenagers are leaving Australian schools about now. Tragically, many of them will be heading straight to Centrelink, joining the hundreds of thousands of Australians who are unemployed or underemployed.

In recent years, more than 15 per cent of teenage workers have been unable to find jobs and more than 5 per cent of all workers are presently unemployed. The latter figure is about three times the unemployment rate that prevailed throughout the long economic boom that lasted from 1940 until 1970.

It was the Labor government of John Curtin that first made full employment a political mantra and then proceeded to prove that it was possible. How the world has changed.

Employment Minister Bill Shorten now speaks of 5 per cent unemployment as being the new ''full employment''. At the same time, he presides over a system that denies dignity to unemployed workers who struggle to survive on a government pittance that is designed to punish and shame.

What has happened to the modern Labor Party? How can it be comfortable punishing the unemployed for the plight the government has put them in? And why is the Liberal Party quiescent in this?

For make no mistake about it, the past few decades have seen governments of both persuasions preside over a deliberately created pool of hundreds of thousands of unemployed and underemployed workers.

These hapless workers are the human ammunition that the Reserve Bank keeps ready to deploy against the long-vanquished inflation bogy. If unemployment was ever to fall much below 5 per cent, the bank would quickly increase interest rates to push unemployment back up towards 5 per cent.

It was not always so. In 1972, Labor leader Gough Whitlam attacked the Liberal government of Billy McMahon for causing the unemployment rate to approach 2 per cent. Whitlam's election speech promised that his government's ''first priority will be to restore genuine full employment - without qualification, without hedging''. Initially, Whitlam was successful. Unemployment was reduced to a more normal 1.3 per cent by 1974. However, as the effects of the 1973 oil crisis worked their way through the international economy, unemployment in Australia rebounded to more than 4 per cent by June 1975.

It was not all Labor's fault. The whole Western world was experiencing the new phenomenon of ''stagflation'', with inflation and unemployment both rising sharply.

Policymakers were in a bind. If they tried to reduce unemployment, they stoked the already high inflation. And if they focused on reducing inflation, they increased the already high unemployment. It was in these circumstances that the goal of full employment gradually slipped off Labor's agenda. As historian Frank Crowley observed, ''politicians became accustomed to a notion which would once have appalled them - an 'acceptable level' of unemployment''.

At the same time, there was a rising tide of criticism of the unemployed workers themselves, as if they were the architects of their plight. In 1974, the term ''dole bludger'' was introduced into political discourse by Liberal politicians.

For a time, Labor remained passionate about helping the unemployed. At the 1977 election, when unemployment was trending towards 7 per cent, opposition leader Whitlam pledged to ''reverse the deepening trend to higher and higher unemployment''. His election advertisements promised voters that the ALP would ''Get Australia working''. It was his political swansong.

By the time of the next election, Labor leader Bill Hayden portrayed full employment more as an ideal than a practical possibility. ''Every Australian must have the right to a job,'' declared Hayden. ''That is a principle we cannot, and will not, abandon.'' However, he did not say when it might be achieved. ''It won't be easy, and it won't be quick. But it must be attempted,'' he said. In effect, it was becoming Labor's new ''light on the hill'', the party's distant and unattainable goal. Soon, it would not even be that.

By the time Labor returned to power under Bob Hawke in 1983, the goal of full employment was more distant than ever. More than 10 per cent of workers were then unemployed. Although Hawke was desperate to get the figure down, it was like chasing a mirage. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were created, but the increasing entry of women into the workforce ensured that it was never sufficient. By 1989, 5.6 per cent of the workforce was still unemployed. That was as good as it was going to get. The recession of the early 1990s saw unemployment bounce back to more than 10 per cent. After a decade of hard work, it was back to square one.

It was in this context that the government of Paul Keating gave the Reserve Bank its independence and the responsibility for getting inflation down. The single-minded focus on inflation seemed to make sense in the circumstances.

Twenty years on, inflation has become a distant memory. Unfortunately, full employment is an even more distant memory.

Neither Labor nor Liberal politicians are willing to hold out hope for the hundreds of thousands of Australians who remain unemployed or underemployed. And neither party is willing to speak up for the many school leavers who will soon be joining them.

A level of 5 per cent unemployment has become the new normal. Curtin and Chifley would be appalled.

Now that inflation is firmly under control, it should not be too much to expect that the Labor Party commit itself once again to a policy of full employment".

That article was wrote in 2012, but nothing has changed.The major political parties have conned the Australian public into fearing budget deficits so fiscal stimulus as a policy option is all but dead.

 

Not much point comparing us to post WWII situation. The only reasonable comparison to make is early 90s ... and it's nothing like that.
A lot of those school kids heading straight to Centrelink don't live in capital cities.

 

Unemployment benefits were never designed to replaced your full-time employment wage...otherwise no-one would bother trying to find work.

It is a safety net to help folks with their living expenses while they are looking for another job.

To suggest that unemployment benefits were designed to "punish and shame" is a ridiculous Civ Lib and handwringer statement.

Years ago, folks had pride and were horrified to have to be on the dole...now folks expect it - and expect to get the full monty.

That attitude (not yours 2Fast - the author if the article) is not helping get rid of this sook mindset our society now has....the last thing we need is to have rubbish like that published for everyone to read and start believing in.

The reality is that the world market place and strides in technology for production have seen more jobs disappear each year (in Australia) to O/S and to technology than there are school leavers and immigrants entering the workforce each year.

 

Maybe the BS in ABS stands for something else?

Has anyone heard anything about Clive Palmer's Nickel refinery possibly closing in Townsville?

 

The figures are as accurate as the methodology allows them to be.

Even if the goal posts shift from time to time, we're not like China (state sanctioned misrepresentaton).

And, with all due respect to Shane Oliver (or any other economist) - it's just so typical to look beyond the imperfections in their own forecasting (omg!) than to say "you know what, maybe we just didn't predict this one right".

As Michael Pascoe put it -

The result was better than nearly everyone predicted. Maybe now the commentariat will have to simply accept that more is happening primarily in the service sector of the economy that it has been willing to accept.

TL;DR - Move along, nothing to see here.