Australian labour market – full-time jobs decline as unemployment continues to rise

The labour market contraction that I have been signalling for the last two months continued in August. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the latest labour force data today (September 24, 2026) – Labour Force, Australia – for August 2026 – which showed that the labour market deteriorated further in August, in that full-time employment growth was negative and unemployment rose. I suspect, however, that the September release will show some revisions to the data given the changes that the ABS are making to its survey collection model (see below). Overall, there are now 10.8 per cent of available labour not being used (either unemployed or underemployed), which makes a farce of the RBA’s claims that the labour market is tight. There is substantial scope for more job creation given the slack that is present.

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The failure of neoliberalism and the progressive failure to articulate that has engendered the rise of the far Right

On Sunday (September 20, 2026), the two state elections in Germany confirmed a trend that has been unfolding for some years in fact – the polarisation of politics in nations, and, in particular the legitimisation of far Right politicians espousing views that are not inconsistent with the views of the National Socialists in Germany in the 1930s. Those views were considered the anathema of acceptable in the post WW2 period but now are garnering increased support again. Chancellor Merz called the outcome “a disaster” with the far Right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) recording the most votes in the – 2026 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election. The other interesting result was recorded in the – 2026 Berlin state election – where a Left candidate triumphed echoing the sort of momentum that Zohran Mamdani achieved in the New York in the November 4, 2025 city elections. These results are indicative of the trends that the failure of neoliberalism has engendered. I trace this theme in this blog post.

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The elaborate farce being played out between the Bank of England and the British Treasury

As at September 9, 2026, the Bank of England held £489,026 million in British government gilts (bonds). Since the beginning of February 2022, the Bank has been steadily selling of the stock of gilts it purchased as part of its Asset Purchase Facility (APF) over the period March 11, 2009 to December 15, 2021. These purchases defined its so-called ‘quantitative easing’ (QE) programme that spanned the GFC and the Pandemic as the Bank sought to keep interest rates (and bond yields) at low levels. The so-called Quantitative Tightening (QT) programme that began in November 2022 is now giving the government political problems because it is one of the reasons bond yields are rising. The whole relationship between the Bank of England and the Treasury is an elaborate farce involving transfers back and forth that have no functional purpose other than to disguise the fact that the government is the currency issuer and has no effective financial constraint on its spending. But while the accounting is farcical it does have real world political implications which work against the elected part of government fulfilling a useful public purpose.

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Is opposition to the AI development the new Ludditism?

In the early C19th, skilled English textile workers fearing for their future wage earning capacity launched a campaign against the automated machinery that was fast being introduced into the factory system. The initial protests in Nottingham in 1811 spread quickly to Yorkshire and Lancashire. They became known as the – Luddites – a self-appointed title and for the next 5 years or so, the conflict between the workers and the bosses (aided by government) ensued. The workers’ case was really about who controlled the production process and the new technology they were fearful of was just another part of the sequence where capital sought to exert control on the extraction of surplus value from the workforce. Since then, if one expresses opposition to the introduction of new technology one is labelled with that title. The latest battle front in this struggle might be the rapid introduction of Artificial Intelligence, although that process goes well beyond an aim to control workplaces and reflects a broader desire to control society in general.

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Is Keynesianism dead? Far from it – it provides the life support for a crisis-ridden capitalism

On September 28, 1976, then British PM gave an historic speech at the Annual Labour Party Conference held in Blackpool. The speech was written by his son-in-law, one Peter Jay, who himself was mired in scandals throughout his career. For example, the nepotism allegations after he was appointed British Ambassador to the US, his wife’s extra-marital affair with Carl Bernstein, his own affair with the family nanny at the embassy and the resulting paternity lawsuit that Jay initially denied but was found to be the father, not to mention his demeaning relationship with Robert Maxwell. A good candidate for a speech write. In that speech, Callaghan more or less claimed that the Keynesian consensus up to that point (from the Great Depression) was dead and that the fiscal tools that had delivered prosperity in the post WW2 period were no longer effective and should fiscal deficits should be abandoned. How exactly when the non-government sector as a whole desired to spend less than they earned overall was not specified because the lie that cutting government spending was a growth tool dominated. This narratives that Callaghan introduced have been repeated many times since that time when conservative commentators and economists seek attention. The latest appeared in the Financial Times (September 5, 2026) in the form of an article by former Bank of England board member Andy Haldane – Is Keynesianism dead?. He says yes, I say no!

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Yen starts to appreciate again – as you were!

In recent months, the mainstream media commentators have been issuing increasing lurid predictions of how the ‘out of control’ fiscal situation in Japan is killing the yen and a full-scale currency crisis was imminent, after the yen moved across the ‘fabled’ 160 mark against the US dollar. What is ‘fabled’ about that threshold is anyone’s guess, but mainstream economists and their mouthpieces in the press love to come up with disaster thresholds that generate headlines. There is nothing significant about 160. Last Tuesday (September 1, 2026), the yen reached 160.20. At the time of writing, the yen was sitting on 155.95 to the US dollar. Why is the yen appreciating again? And why have the short-sellers become very wary? Especially, as the Takaichi government is clearly intent on pushing ahead with the rather significant fiscal expansion, which the mainstream think will kill the currency. This post argues that the yen dynamics have little really to do with fiscal policy settings. Other factors are more significant and often reflect the skittishness of the financial markets chasing profit wherever they can find it. The commentators and the financial market spokespersons might claim the dynamics are all about excessive government debt and all that political stuff, but the reality is very different. As you were!

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Latest Australian national accounts data provide no justification for further interest rate rises

I am travelling a lot today and so this is just a brief reflection on the response in the media to yesterday’s National Account release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The reaction from the mainstream media has been rather incredulous with most commentators claiming in the most lurid terms that the figures mean that the Reserve Bank of Australia will have no choice but to hike interest rates again at its next meeting to, as one character put it “to close the gap between supply and demand”. Well it should come as no surprise that in my assessment, the data that came out yesterday provides no basis for an interest rate increase. And given the dynamics that the data is depicting, there is no way an interest rate increase would do anything to close such a gap without plunging the economy into a major recession. Any strength in current expenditure is going outside the domestic production system via imports – capital for data centres, EVs. Capacity utilisation rates remain below 80 per cent. Unemployment is rising. Any price pressures are coming from global events that are insensitive to domestic interest rate rises.

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Australian national accounts – subdued conditions continue amidst an EV purchasing boom

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the latest – Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, June 2026 – today (September 2, 2026). This data is now starting to reflect the full impacts of the Middle East disruptions and the interest rate impacts arising from the recent hikes in rates from the RBA. The economy is slowing and really only being held up by the household consumption and exports of fossil fuels. Interestingly, the maintenance of household expenditure is being driven by a surge in demand for electric cars in the face of the rising petrol costs.The fast-tracking of this transition is welcome. The boom in private business investment arising from the data centre expenditure appears to have, for now, peaked in the March-quarter 2026. I expect the economy to remain subdued for the next few quarters.

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Why do we support political inaction that undermines our well-being?

I have been very sad in the last week or so as the news of the environmental devastation and its impact on human life in Nepal has steadily infiltrated our attention. The causes of that disaster are many but overwhelmingly point to the impact of climate change on the Himalayan permafrost and glacial lakes, which, in turn, is undermining the water and food security of mostly materially poor communities. But there is also the impact of inequality which sees the least advantaged members of those communities with inadequate housing and clustered, instead, in flimsy huts and dwellings along river banks that make them the most vulnerable when these disasters occur. Over the weekend, a major political event occurred in the state of Western Australia, where the far Right loony party, One Nation scored a significant political victory in the by election and signalled that both major parties (Liberal and Labour) are now in danger of being swept away by this far Right push, which is mimicking the trends across the globe. The relevance of between the two seemingly disparate events is that the One Nation leadership spoke at a rally yesterday (August 30, 2026) in Victoria and promised that if elected to federal government at the next election they will ramp up investment in coal power and abandon renewable energy and carbon emissions targets and expand mining (Source). I have been researching why the Right is leading the charge on climate denialism and why low income people are being increasingly attracted to their ideas that run counter to the well established scientific evidence and empirical realities that unfold on a regular basis that support the contentions of the scientists. The story that unfolds also bears on why mainstream macroeconomic fictions continue to dominate our thinking about policy despite the massive harm their implementation does to the well-being of societies. This is an on-going theme that I am working on.

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Government debt hysteria relies on acceptance of a totally unnecessary administrative practice

As a followup on Monday’s blog post – Australian government debt approaching $A1 trillion – who cares? Everybody it seems but me (August 24, 2026) – there is an additional aspect of the hysteria around government debt levels that was implicit in that post but bears more detailed discussion. What I am writing today is nothing that I haven’t written before but as the debt hysteria comes in cycles and then becomes more subdued once the more ridiculous predictions fail as time passes, the counter has to be regularly repeated. I am studying the Japanese language at present and as it becomes more complex (for me), repetition is the only way I can ingrain the written language and sounds. The point today is that the mainstream commentary, even from so-called progressive sources, takes as given a major institutional feature of the modern system that is totally unnecessary in a fiat monetary system. Further, that feature just happens to be imposed to advance the ideological interests of the elites, while it masquerades as a non-negotiable and natural requirement of a sustainable system. The implications of abandoning that feature is what I am discussing here today.

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