{"id":44853,"date":"2020-05-05T18:00:48","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=44853"},"modified":"2020-05-05T18:00:48","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T08:00:48","slug":"latest-employment-data-for-australia-exposes-federal-governments-wilful-neglect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=44853","title":{"rendered":"Latest employment data for Australia exposes Federal government’s wilful neglect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tI reported in this blog post – Policy failure – Australian unemployment rate probably already around 10.9 per cent<\/a> (April, 2020) – that the The Australian Bureau of Statistics has started publishing weekly employment data on a two-week cycle. The data is drawn from a new series made available as a result of the Single Touch Payroll<\/em> data provided by the Australian Tax Office and provides researchers like me with much more timely data than the monthly labour force survey. The latest edition came out today (May 5, 2020) – Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia, Week ending 18 April 2020<\/a> – which covers the new data from April 4, 2020. The results are shocking. The conclusion from my analysis of the latest available data is that some sectors in the Australian labour market have experienced a sudden and catastrophic contraction – like nothing we have ever seen in the data. Both employment losses and major wage losses are underway and the policy response is totally inadequate for the task. A much larger fiscal intervention is required and it has to be directed at workers rather than firms and support direct job creation.
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Relevant blog posts as I trace the data trail over time are:<\/p>\n

1. “We need the state to bail out the entire nation”<\/a> (March 26, 2020).<\/p>\n

2. The government should pay the workers 100 per cent, not rely on wage subsidies<\/a> (March 30, 2020).<\/p>\n

3. A Job Guarantee would require $A26.5 billion net to reduce the unemployment rate by 6 percentage points<\/a> (April 30, 2020).<\/p>\n

In terms of the coverage of the ATO Single Touch Payroll<\/em> data, the ABS report that:<\/p>\n

\nApproximately 99% of substantial employers (those with 20 or more employees) and 71% of small employers (19 or less employees) are currently reporting through Single Touch Payroll.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jobs collapse in Australia continues<\/h2>\n

Here is what has happened to total employment in Australia since January 4, 2020 (the ATO data starts at the beginning of the year). The index is based at 100 on March 14, 2020 which appears to be around the peak employment, although it was slowing since February 29, 2020.<\/p>\n

Overall, there has been a 7.5 per cent contraction between March 21, 2020 and April 18, 2020.<\/p>\n

While the pattern was almost identical for males and females up to April 11, 2020, in the last week of the data, the percentage contraction in female employment has intensified.<\/p>\n

Between March 21, 2020 and April 18, 2020, male employment has fallen by 6.2 per cent and female employment by 8.1 per cent<\/p>\n

So the crisis is now impacting disproportionately on females.<\/p>\n

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What does this imply?<\/h2>\n

We can do some ‘back-of-the-envelope’ calculations with some assumptions to see what this might imply.<\/p>\n