Aug 2009 – RUIN – LGAQ
Category:Labour MarketRegional Unemployment Index (RUIN) for August 2009
Sponsored by the Logan Government Association of Queensland
The picture in August.
The August unemployment figures show a net 240,000 Australians have lost full time jobs since November, due to the recession, while the stimulus has helped to create 168,000 jobs.
Our profiling shows the full time jobs lost were overwhelmingly skilled blue collar, clerical and professional, while the part time jobs created tended to be unskilled and paid minimum wages.
As well as providing jobs for the unemployed, between last November and August, the stimulus even pulled an extra 86,000 underemployed Australians back into the workforce. Where Peter Costello had begun a trend to boost workforce numbers with the sticks of Work choices and Welfare to Work, Wayne Swan has accelerated it, aided by the freezing of minimum wages and the carrot of a $95 billion stimulus.
There’s some evidence in the profiles that the trend for growth in minimum wage jobs leading up to the 2007 election helped disguise an increase in unemployment by higher SES groups which can be the first sign of an impending recession. So the RBA may have been cranking up interest rates in response to increased flexibility in the Labour market, rather than to a strengthening of the Labour market.
Read Full Report –Regional Unemployment Index (RUIN) – August 2009
| Disclaimer: The Labour Market reports and associated maps have been prepared as an educational and public relations exercise and have not been designed as an advisory tool for business and we take no responsibility for those who use either of them for these purposes. The sampling errors for smaller Labour Force regions are often large and the raw figures used cannot be easily adjusted for seasonal trends. The statistical significance of the profiles also need to be considered. We repeat, caution is urged in any interpretation of these statistics. We acknowledge and thank the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the provision of original data, Dr Otto Helwig of MDS for the HES micro simulation modelling and Phil Henry of Business Geographics for the mapping. |
