The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has today released data on retrenchments, which revealed an increased number of people lost their job in 2013, with Australia’s youth particularly hard hit:
Approximately two million people ceased a job during the 12 months to February 2013. While the majority of these (60%) left their last job for voluntary reasons, 19% (or 381,000) left their last job because they were retrenched or had their job made redundant. The remaining 21% left their last job because of their own ill-health or injury, or because the job was seasonal or temporary. When expressed as a proportion of all people who had been employed at some time over the previous 12 months, the rate of retrenchments in the 12 months to February 2013 was 3.1%.
The rate of retrenchments between 2000 and 2013 is shown in graph 1. Over this time, the rate fell from 4.0% in 2000 to a low of 2.0% in 2008, before increasing sharply in 2010 to 3.1%. It remained broadly at that level in 2012 and 2013 (2.6% and 3.1% respectively).
When examining trends in retrenchments by sex (graph 1), it is evident that the retrenchment rate for men has been consistently higher than that for women (for example 3.5% and 2.5%, respectively in the 12 months to February 2013). A major factor influencing the different retrenchment rates for males and females was that men were more concentrated in those industries which had a higher rate of retrenchments (e.g. construction, mining, manufacturing), and the female dominated industries (education and training, health care and social assistance) have maintained relatively low rates of retrenchment…
For both males and females, the retrenchment rates were highest for the 20-24 (5.2% and 3.7% respectively) and 15-19 year age groups (4.1% and 3.5% respectively).
Coincidentally, the finding that young males have borne the brunt of job losses is supported by the latest labour force data from the ABS, which shows that youth employment – particularly among males – has deteriorated materially since the onset of the GFC. Here’s Professor Bill Mitchell’s take from last month:
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Over the last 12 months, teenagers have lost 37.9 thousand jobs while the rest of the labour force have gained 136.7 thousand net jobs. Remember that the overall result represents a very poor annual growth in employment.
Even more disturbing is the attrition of full-time jobs among teenagers – losing 4.7 thousand over the last year.
The teenage segment of the labour market is being particularly dragged down by the sluggish employment growth, which is hardly surprising given that the least experienced and/or most disadvantaged (those with disabilities etc) are rationed to the back of the queue by the employers.
The following graph shows the change in aggregates over the last 12 months.
To further emphasise the plight of our teenagers, I compiled the following graph that extends the time period from the February 2008, which was the month when the unemployment rate was at its low point in the last cycle, to the present month (May 2014). So it includes the period of downturn and then the so-called “recovery” period. Note the change in vertical scale compared to the previous two graphs.
Since February 2008, there have been only 917 thousand (net) jobs added to the Australian economy but teenagers have lost a staggering 117.3 thousand over the same period. It is even more stark when you consider that 97.2 thousand full-time teenager jobs have been lost in net terms.
Even in the traditionally, concentrated teenage segment – part-time employment, has shed 20.1 thousand jobs (net) even though 521.3 thousand part-time jobs have been added overall.
To put the teenage employment situation in a scale context the following graph shows the Employment-Population ratios for males, females and total 15-19 year olds since March 2008…
The facts are that the absolute loss of jobs reported above is depicting a disastrous situation for our teenagers. Males, in particular, have lost out severely…
How exactly is the Abbott Government’s tightened eligibility requirements for under-30s seeking welfare supposed to improve the situation facing Australia’s unemployed youth?
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.
