with
BRENDAN O’CONNOR MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND INDUSTRY
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SCIENCE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SMALL AND FAMILY BUSINESS
MEMBER FOR GORTON
New data has confirmed the devastating impact of this recession on Australian workers.
Some of the industries with the most job losses are those that have disproportionately been excluded from JobKeeper because of the Morrison Government’s bungled roll-out of the program.
The industries suffering the largest declines in job vacancies are arts (falling 95 per cent), rental hiring and real estate (falling 68 per cent), and accommodation and food services (falling 66 per cent).
According to the ABS, employment in the Accommodation and Food Services sector fell by 293,000 in the May quarter, the single largest fall in that industry since the series started in 1984.
These new figures reinforce how catastrophic the Morrison Government’s decision to prevent over a million workers from accessing JobKeeper has been.
Unemployment is worse than it needs to be, the recession is deeper than necessary, and the recovery will be that much harder because Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg are failing to give workers and businesses certainty about their plans after their September “snapback” deadline.
Today’s job vacancy data show how hard it will be for workers to re-enter the labour market, with the largest fall in job vacancies on record, decreasing 43 per cent over the May 2020 quarter.
This result eclipses the previous largest job vacancy decline during the 1990s recession of 27 per cent.
Millions of Australians are out of work or are looking for more hours but job vacancies are in free-fall.
At the same time as the Liberals are asking employers to have “honest conversations” with workers, they are keeping Australians in the dark about the real state of the economy, with the JobKeeper review and the budget update delayed until after the Eden-Monaro by-election.
People are hurting and jobs continue to disappear.
Australians have worked together to combat the virus, but more work must be done by the Morrison Government to ensure the hardest-hit Australians are not left out during this recession and left behind in the recovery.
