When the Morrison Government announced its $ billion JobMaker wage subsidy in the October Federal Budget, we cheekily labelled it “JobTaker” because we believed it would incentivise employers to replace full-time workers with insecure part-time workers.
The logic supporting this claim was simple. JobMaker gives businesses $200 a week for each additional employee they hire aged 16 to 29 and $100 per week for people aged 30 to 35.
Therefore, businesses could gain financially if they cut existing employee hours and instead hired a bunch of people aged under 30 or 35 on 20 hours per week. This way, businesses could receive subsidies, reduce their out-of-pocket wage costs and earn fatter profits, all courtesy of the Australian taxpayer. And they could do all this without actually lifting overall employee hours above what would occur anyway as the economy continues to recover.
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