Terry McCrann: Roy Morgan data shows 14.5pc unemployed but it’s likely double
Right now, the ABS is trumpeting a ludicrously fake jobless rate in pride at the top of its home page, but if they bothered to look a little deeper they would find something deeply disturbing about the real jobless number, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
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The official Roy Morgan Research data showed over two million Australians were still unemployed in June — on their numbers, that’s a staggering 14.5 per cent jobless rate.
We will have to wait another two weeks for the fake Australian Bureau of Statistics jobs and jobless numbers, which will once again dramatically understate the real jobless figure and will in any event only take us up to the first two weeks of June.
Right now, the ABS is still trumpeting a ludicrously fake 7.1 per cent jobless rate in pride of place at the top of its home page; and will replace it with another ludicrously fake number in two weeks.
The gap between that 7.1 per cent and the virtually unchanged (from May) Morgan 14.5 per cent is bad enough, but I estimate that the real jobless number is even higher — at least 20 per cent of the workforce.
This is when you add to those formally recognised as jobless, those who have just left the workforce as there’s no point in looking for a job, plus some of those in JobKeeper who would have been sacked but for the government subsidy which is currently scheduled to terminate at the end of September.
There was a tiny bit of good news in the Morgan numbers; their jobless number dropped 42,000 from May.
But that was almost entirely cancelled by the rise in under-employment — those who were in a job but wanted to work more hours.
According to Morgan, underemployment was now at 10 per cent and had jumped 37,000 in May. Put the two together, and a massive 3.45 million Australians or an even more staggering 24.5 per cent of the entire workforce were either jobless or underemployed.
This is not the same as my “20 per cent-plus” real jobless estimate. My number picks up those officially in a job (under both the ABS and Morgan definitions) but would not be but for JobKeeper.
My number also does not include those who are underemployed. Add those on and the real jobless rate plus those underemployed is over 30 per cent. Yes, to repeat, over 30 per cent.
It’s important for me to explain that while there are over 3.3 million workers “employed” under JobKeeper, I’m only including around one million of them in my “real jobless rate”.
I’m trying to estimate how many of the 3.3 million would have been sacked but for JobKeeper and indeed how many will be sacked when and if it ends; I’ve gone for 1 million of the 3.3 million as a “guesstimate”, with the emphasis very definitely but I would claim conservatively, on the “guess”.
This is the truest measure of just how bad things are; that something like one in three working-age Australians are jobless or would be jobless but for the unsustainable (in the long run) JobKeeper handout or are desperate to work longer than they are doing.
Yes, all these numbers will fall as we come out of the lockdowns, but they are not going to fall back anywhere close to the levels of even February anytime soon.
Indeed, and even that’s assuming that the exits from the lockdowns proceed relatively smoothly and hopefully reasonably quickly — a very big assumption.
For as Michelle Levine, Morgan CEO, soberly — and sombrely — noted: “the reimposition of restrictions this week in Melbourne shows COVID-19 still poses a significant and ongoing threat to lives and livelihoods”.
Underscoring this, most of the drop in the Morgan jobless number was in NSW. Everywhere else apart from SA it was either unchanged or slightly. Now the new lockdowns in Melbourne pose a serious threat to jobs across Victoria and indeed into the other states.
The big question that is now going to grow to dominate both politics and policy discussion over coming weeks is what happens to JobKeeper — and to a lesser extent the currently doubled JobSeeker — after September.
Apart from directly underwriting the jobs of 3.3 million people, JobKeeper (and JobSeeker-plus) are directly injecting over $3 billion every week into spending across the economy.
That is in turn underwriting even more jobs. Take them away and not only would a large lump of the 3.3 million go “officially jobless”, but the drop in spending from that cash evaporation would throw more people out of work.
We really do need to end the lockdowns and deal directly with any virus eruptions without going back to them. The outcome of the “Dan Andrews experiment” is absolutely critical.
HONG KONG LEAPS 3PC — GO FIGURE
The day after China ruthlessly cracked down on Hong Kong — all but effectively ending both the rule of law there and the territory’s broader independence — the HK share market leapt 3 per cent.
The easy observation is that investors are putting money ahead of people; and there’s certainly truth in that. Indeed, we see that with China itself: look how many people have got very rich both inside and dealing with China over the past 20-plus years.
But it’s also a reminder that life can be complicated; it’s seldom all black and all white. It’s also an important pointer to the great forces of multi-trillion-dollar liquidity that are driving all markets irrespective of local or political influences.
At the core of all this is Wall Street and what the Fed is doing and indeed what’s happening with the US economy with two hits of good news on — their — jobs overnight Thursday and coming up overnight Friday.
How the NBN has delivered just in time
The NBN has delivered, and it has done so in what can only be described as the ultimate — the hit-the-ground running immediate — stress test, rites Terry McCrann.
Sydney airport the wrong place at the wrong time
Sydney Airport has some of the sweetest acreage in Australia but when passengers numbers have dwindled from 9 million in the March quarter to 400,000 in the June quarter, that doesn’t count for much, writes Terry McCrann.