Originally published at Upon Hope on 16/11/2019.
Mark Moncrieff
Only two days ago I wrote about how at the rate of employment growth in June we should see the end of unemployment in 1424 years. It turns out that was wildly optimistic.
Economists have been expecting a jobs surge, sadly that turned out not to be the case. Instead of a jobs surge, the Australian economy lost 19,000 jobs in October. The expectation was that 16,000 jobs would be added to the economy.
This year there has been a constant stream of ‘expect good news on the economy’ stories that have turned out to be spin and nothing more. A recession is on it’s way and talking up a bad economy is one sign of that. So unemployment is going up.
Something that I haven’t been seeing much on is underemployment, ie people who have jobs but not enough hours to live on. It turns out that that is also being tracked.
For October 2019:
- Unemployment was at 5.3%
- Underemployment was at 8.5%
- Under-utilisation was at 13.8%
Of course under-utilisation is a combination of unemployment and underemployment. That means 1,800,000 are in need of either a job or more hours.
Then to add to the picture it is getting harder to get a job as more people are applying for jobs. In the past few months there has been a 30% increase.
Things are getting harder.
