RICHARD MARLES MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY
SHADOW MINISTER FOR NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION, EMPLOYMENT, SKILLS AND SMALL BUSINESS
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SCIENCE
MEMBER FOR CORIO

JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE MASKS MORE BAD NEWS 

FOR OUT-OF-WORK AUSTRALIANS

As protracted lockdowns which are the direct result of the Morrison-Joyce Government’s failures continue across large parts of the country, these jobs numbers reveal more than 146,000 Australians have fallen out of the jobs market and the number of hours worked collapsed by 66 million. 

There are still close to two million Australians looking for work, or more work, with the underemployment rate increasing to 9.3 percent.

200,000 people have stopped looking for work in the past two months, and 1.2 million Australians are “working” zero hours – the highest since the start of the pandemic.

If we include all these people, the effective unemployment rate in Australia right now is over 14 per cent.

There are businesses that are only just managing to cling on by their fingernails and don’t know how much longer they can last.

As the RBA Governor, Philip Lowe made clear this week, many small businesses “’are in wait, survive and see’ mode, having experienced a large drop in revenue.”

Weakness in the jobs market is a direct consequence of the Morrison-Joyce Government’s incompetence and complacency which is costing the economy billions of dollars a week.

Scott Morrison has been forced to go begging around the globe for additional vaccine supplies because he didn’t order enough last year, as a result, there are millions of Australians in lockdown and hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses facing great uncertainty. 

Had Scott Morrison done his job last year, families wouldn’t be in rolling lockdowns with home schooling and small businesses wouldn’t be stuck in limbo. 

Australians are 18 months into this pandemic and we have a shrinking economy and no plan for recovery. 

There are millions of Australians who face great uncertainty at the moment, with many feeling as though there is no end in sight, all because Scott Morrison didn’t do his job and order enough jabs.

THURSDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 2021