Government welfare jobs mushroom

The bed pan economy is booming:

The federal government’s largest department is to buck the trend of declining public service numbers and create up to 2000 new permanent jobs, the main public service union said on Wednesday

The roles will mostly be in Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support Agency call centres around Australia, run by the behemoth Department of Human Services, and many of the jobs look set to be snapped up by some of thousands of casual workers already on DHS’s books.

Get used to it. Australia’s annual employment change makes the trend clear:

The below chart, which tracks employment changes since the GFC (August 2008), shows how the structure of the labour market has changed:

It’s gubmint all the way Downunder.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.