The budding youth unemployment crisis has been well documented on this site.
Nevertheless, to summarise, total employment for 15-24 year-olds has fallen by 5.2% since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), with full-time employment down by a whopping 17.9%. Youth unemployment has also surged from 8.8% in September 2008 to 13.6% as at April 2015 (see below table).
The decline in youth employment is in stark contrast to the rest of the labour force, which has experienced 11.8% overall jobs growth since the GFC, with full-time employment up by 8.8%.
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Yesterday, Roy Morgan released new research showing that the unemployment crisis is taking its toll on the mental health of Australia’s youth:
Over the last five years, the proportion of 18-24 year-olds who reported experiencing anxiety in an average 12 months has risen from 11.2% to 23.0%, the highest incidence of any age group and well above the national average of 16.6%.
The proportion of 18-24 year-olds affected by stress has grown from 24.0% to 33.7%, while incidence of depression has increased from 11.3% to 19.4% — again, consistently higher than the national averages (25.2% and 14.5% respectively).
Among 18-24 year-olds who are looking for work, the incidence of these mental health conditions is even higher. Almost 28% reported experiencing anxiety last year; 24.7% said they’d been depressed; and a whopping 41.2% were affected by stress.
Roy Morgan’s figures highlight, yet again, the egregiousness of the Abbott Government’s attempt in last year’s Budget (thankfully rejected in the Senate) to deny under-30s access to unemployment benefits for six months and raise university fees, along with its open-slather approach to foreign worker visas.
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Australia’s youth are crying out for political representation and a fair go.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
