South Australia’s jobless rate jumps to 7.2% after shedding over 40,000 jobs as economic impact of the coronavirus becomes known

South Australia’s jobless rate has jumped and remains the highest in Australia as the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic becomes known.

South Australia’s unemployment rate has jumped again to the highest in the nation, as new official figures show that 40,800 local jobs were wiped out amid tough lockdowns last month.

Unemployment across the nation has surged, as have the number of people in work but looking for extra hours.

In SA, the seasonally-adjusted unemployment is now 7.2 per cent.

That is the highest it has been since August, and a rise of 0.9 per cent in April.

The headline figure would be much higher if not for a collapse in the number of people seeking work.

Across Australia, 594,300 people lost employment in April.

Underemployment in SA has also exploded to by far its highest rate on record.

Underemployment measures the number of people who have jobs, but want more hours.

That leapt from 11.2 per cent to 17 per cent in SA in April.

The number of jobs in SA has cratered from a near record 854,500 in May, to 813,700 in April. In one month, SA has lost four years of employment growth.

Australia’s unemployment rate rose from 5.2 to 6.2 per cent in April.

SA rate is the highest in the nation, ahead of Queensland on 6.8 per cent.

Australian Industrial Transformation Institute director John Spoehr said the number of jobless and underemployed people in SA was “alarmingly high”.

He said the full toll was masked by the people giving up on finding jobs entirely, and those who were accessing the JobKeeper scheme.

The male unemployment rate in SA has risen sharply to 9.2 per cent, and Professor Spoehr said he expected the overall rate to head into double digits.

“In reality it is already there, but masked by the very large number of people that are not counted as unemployed because they are on the JobKeeper scheme,” he said. “Underemployment will need to be watched as closely as unemployment to understand just how SA is faring.

“We will need three months of ABS figures before we capture a more complete picture of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on jobs. We won’t know till Q4 of this year how many people will make the transition back to work from the JobKeeper program.”

ABS lead of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said: “The large drop in employment did not translate into a similar sized rise in the number of unemployed people because around 489,800 people (across all of Australia) left the labour force”.

“This means there was a high number of people without a job who didn’t or couldn’t actively look for work or weren’t available for work”, Mr Jarvis said.

Innovation and Skills Minister David Pisoni said the results were unlikely to fully reflect the impact of COVID-19 on SA jobs.

The implementation of JobKeeper payments have also complicated the jobs figures picture in unprecedented times.

Mr Pisoni said: “This is the greatest economic challenge of our time, which is why the Marshall Liberal Government is responding swiftly and decisively to ensure as many businesses and jobs as possible make it through to the other side.

“Today we’ve launched a one-stop shop for small businesses who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent bushfires, the SA Small Business Hub website is full of information and support to help businesses rebuild and recover,” he said.

“Small business is the backbone of the South Australian economy and is a huge employer, and that’s why we will do everything in our power to support as many businesses as possible to get through to the other side, and in turn, preserve as many jobs as possible.”

The Government has unlocked $10,000 payments to small business as part of a wider $1 billion stimulus package including new infrastructure projects.