AMP chief economist, Shane Oliver, has warned that labour underutilisation is now “a chronic problem for Australia”, is far higher than other developed nations, and will continue to depress wage growth:
“It has been trending up this year and has been high for a while now, since the global financial crisis,” he said. “It’s indicative of a greater level of hardship for some workers.
“It means we need to run the economy harder and we need more growth to use the excess capacity in the labour force”…
