Wage subsidies up to $200 a week for virtually all businesses to encourage youth jobs growth
New employees aged up to 35 would be eligible for a wage subsidy for nearly every business in Australia under a Federal Budget scheme to supercharge jobs growth.
SA News
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Hundreds of thousands of young people will be eligible for wage subsidies of up to $200 a week in a $4bn scheme designed to super-charge jobs growth.
The JobMaker hiring credit, one of the centrepieces of the budget, is designed to encourage employers to hire those already hardest hit by the pandemic-induced recession.
It will be payable to employers for new hires for up to 12 months at the rate of $200 weekly for those aged 16 to 29 years and $100 weekly for those aged between 30 and 35 years.
All businesses, other than the major banks, will be eligible and workers must be employed for at least 20 hours per week. It is estimated the wage subsidy will support about 450,000 jobs.
South Australia has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, 7.9 per cent, compared with a national average of 6.8 per cent, despite jobs growth in September resulting in 841,700 people being in work – almost at the pre-pandemic March level of 856,000.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the budget was “all about jobs”, because there would be no economic or budget recovery without a jobs recovery.
“Having a job means more than earning an income. It means economic security. It means independence. It means opportunity,” he said.
“We can’t let this COVID recession take that away.”
The JobMaker scheme is an attempt to stop unemployment surging during what the budget papers brand “the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression” of 1929-33, when the national jobless rate hit 19.7 per cent.
In another measure targeting young people, another wage subsidy will support up to 100,000 new apprentices and trainees by paying a 50 per cent wage subsidy, up to a cap of $7000 per quarter.
The budget also defined a modern manufacturing strategy, which targets six key areas: food and beverages; resources and critical minerals processing; medical products; defence; space; recycling and clean energy.
The budget sets aside $5m to establish, in SA, an advanced manufacturing facility for electric vehicle construction and assembly. This also funds a trial to test electric vehicles’ ability to support battery storage, home charging and grid services.
The gross value of manufacturing in SA has fallen by more than $3bn in the past 20 years but growth opportunities include more than $90bn in naval shipbuilding contracts centred on the Osborne yard.
