Research from the Australian National University suggests that the federal government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme saved 812,000 jobs. The scheme cost $89 billion in total, which equates to about $112,819 for each job that it saved. The working paper notes that JobKeeper may have been introduced slightly too late and could have been wound back earlier, given that the labour market recovered more quickly than expected.
Previous research in 2021 had estimated that JobKeeper had saved 700,000 jobs at an average cost of $107,900 per job.
From The AFR:
