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Job losses slow as country begins opening up
The Australian economy is showing signs of life, with job losses slowing for the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak, official figures show.
Job losses slow as country begins opening up
The Australian economy is showing signs of life, with job losses slowing for the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak, official figures show.
Over the seven weeks from mid-March to early May, total payroll jobs fell by 7.3 per cent, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
“The latest data shows a further slowing in the fall in COVID-19 job losses between mid-April and early May,” said ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis.
“The largest net job losses over the seven weeks of the COVID-19 period, in percentage terms, were in Victoria and New South Wales, where the falls in payroll jobs were around 8.4 per cent and 7.7 per cent.”
Payroll jobs worked by people under 20 showed the largest falls (-14.6 per cent) and were particularly high in the ACT.
But some industries were also showing a reduced impact in recent weeks.
“The accommodation and food services industry had lost around a third of payroll jobs (33.3 per cent) by the week end[ed] 11 April, and a subsequent increase in jobs saw this reduce to around 27.1 per cent by the week end[ed] 2 May,” Mr Jarvis said. “The week-to-week changes are much smaller than they were early in the COVID-19 period.
“The decrease in the number of jobs in the week end[ed] 2 May was 1.1 per cent, which was only slightly larger than the 0.9 [of a percentage point] increase in the week end[ed] 25 April.”
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ April unemployment figures showed that unemployment rose by 104,500 to 823,000 or 6.2 per cent — far below economist prediction of an 8 to 10 per cent unemployment rate.
However, around 2.7 million people either left employment or had their hours reduced, while underutilisation (which combines the underemployment and unemployment rates) also rose to a record high of 19.9 per cent.
The metrics used might also be in the ABS’ favour as simply asking, “Are you looking for work?”, and see the unemployment rate spike to 15.3 per cent, as Roy Morgan’s data has recently shown.
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