The jobs data for April said it all – COVID-19 and the lockdowns imposed to control it across Australia by federal and state governments produced a terrible toll on jobs In April.
According to the April Labour Force report from the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) more than half a million Australians lost their job last month, a record that no one will want to claim any credit for.
The figures will rise for May when reported in a month’s time – if the JobKeeper program is not extended past September, then the figure for unemployment will crash past 10%.
Seasonally adjusted employment fell by 594,300 people between March and April, according to the ABS, or more than 19,800 jobs a day (which would a weak month on its own).
While the unemployment rate lifted to 6.2% from 5.2% in March and better than forecast, it doesn’t include those receiving the JobKeeper payment, even if they have been stood down and are now working zero hours a week.
According to the ABS, large changes were seen across all labour market indicators last month, and the larger than usual number of employed and unemployed people leaving the labour force “resulted in an unprecedented fall in the participation rate by 2.4 percentage points to 63.5 percent”.
That level has been seen since 2004. The underemployment rate rose increased 4.9 points to a record 13.7%.
“This means there was a high number of people without a job who didn’t or couldn’t actively look for work or weren’t available for work,” ABS’s head of labour statistics,” Mr. Jarvis said in Thursday’s report.
Total hours worked fell by around 9.2% in April from March as the lockdowns impacted employment across all sectors of the economy.
“The large drop in employment did not translate into a similar-sized rise in the number of unemployed people because around 489,800 people left the labour force”, Mr. Jarvis said in the ABS release.
Unemployment increased by 104,500 people to 823,300.
The larger than usual number of employed and unemployed people leaving the labour force resulted in an unprecedented fall in the participation rate by 2.4 percentage points to 63.5%.
“This means there was a high number of people without a job who didn’t or couldn’t actively look for work or weren’t available for work”, Mr. Jarvis said.
It means that in total, around 2.7 million Aussies, or one in five workers who had jobs in March, either left employment or had their hours cut in one month – a far greater figure than previous years.
