The Grattan Institute has released analysis suggesting that Australia’s true unemployment rate is nearly double the stated level at 11.7%:
New ABS figures released this morning (14 May) confirm that COVID-19 has thrown a lot of Australians out of work.
About 900,000 people who were employed in the first half of March no longer had a job in the first half of April.1 A further 750,000 people still had a job, but didn’t work any hours in April. It’s likely that the Federal Government’s JobKeeper program helped soften the blow to employment in Australia. The number of people who still had a job despite not doing any work would probably have been much higher if the wage subsidy had not been in place.
