Data To Show If Job Hiring Still Upbeat In Australia

BRISBANE, Australia — Treasury chief Steven Kennedy told senators last week many of the people out of work due to the JobKeeper wage subsidy ending should find employment in coming weeks.

The latest ANZ job advertisement report for May, due for release on June 7, will outline the strength in demand for workers to potentially absorb those job losses.

In April, job ads rose a further 4.7 percent to a 12-year peak and were 27.8 percent higher than their pre-pandemic level.

Addressing a senate hearing last week, Kennedy estimated that using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, some 56,000 people lost jobs in the four weeks following the JobKeeper scheme ending in March.

Back in March, he had predicted that up to 150,000 people could lose their jobs.

“Early indicators suggest that while there have been some job losses associated with the end of the program, and there may be more in the future, the strength of the broader labor market has meant that many of these individuals are finding jobs,” said Kennedy.

On Wednesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics will release its weekly payroll jobs report – covering the fortnight to May 22 – a prelude to the following week’s full labor force report for May.

So far, the Australian Bureau of Statistics believes the end of the JobKeeper wage subsidy in March has had no “discernible impact” on employment.

While there has been uncertainty surrounding the impact of JobKeeper ending, the unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent in April, its sixth consecutive decline.

As per reports by the Australian Parliament, in the 12 months to June 2016 employment in Australia grew by 212,000 or 1.8 percent (in trend terms) to 11.9 million. This growth rate is just below the annual average for employment growth of 1.9 percent recorded since the early 1980s.

However, just over two-thirds (68.3%) of employment growth in the past 12 months was in part‑time employment: around 32% of employed Australians worked part‑time in June 2016 compared with 26% in January 2000.

“The unemployment rate has fallen by 0.4 percentage points over the past year to 5.7 percent in June 2016 (in trend terms). Over this period, the number of people who are unemployed fell by just over 40,000 to 726,000 (in trend terms),” states the report.

“The most recent low for the unemployment rate in Australia was 4.1 percent in April 2008—the lowest unemployment rate recorded since monthly estimates started being released in February 1978.”

(Edited by Vaibhav Vishwanath Pawar and Saptak Datta)