Coronavirus: Jobs recovery gains pace as Victoria reopens

The country has clawed back about 600,000 of the employee jobs lost during the depths of the COVID-19 recession.

There’s more ‘back-to-work’ life is visible in Melbourne’s CBD, though still far from normal commuter and pedestrian traffic. Picture: Sarah Matray

The country has clawed back about 600,000 of the employee jobs lost during the depths of the COVID-19 recession, or two in every three, as weekly payroll figures show Victorian employers took on additional workers over the second half of October as restrictions eased.

The relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions points to an end to job shedding in Victoria, which has successfully suppressed its second wave of coronavirus cases and is now looking to a long ­delayed reopening.

But the Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the tightening of JobKeeper eligibility may have sparked small businesses to let workers go, as payroll jobs in firms with under 20 employees were down by 4.9 per cent since the end of September, when the changes to the wage subsidy scheme were introduced.

 

Overall, the payroll figures for the week ending October 31 show a 1 per cent lift in Victorian jobs versus a fortnight earlier, and a 0.5 per cent national increase.

There were still 330,000 fewer payroll jobs by late October than there were before the pandemic struck, the ABS estimated.

According to analysis by The Australian, this suggests the economy has recouped about two thirds of the 935,000 jobs lost during the peak of the employee layoffs in mid-April.

RBC Capital economist Su-Lin Ong said she expected the “the more substantial relaxation of Victorian restrictions from early November to lend further support to the payroll data in the coming months”.

Ms Ong said improving business confidence and more fiscal and monetary stimulus, alongside promising news around a possible vaccine being available early in 2021, would also work to build momentum in the labour market.

The easing of restrictions in Victoria has provided a big boost to the state’s hospitality sector, and the ABS figures show accommodation and food services payroll jobs jumped by 4.6 per cent over the two weeks to October 31, against a national 1.1 per cent rise.

Despite the positive early signs, Victoria still has some way to go to close the gap with the rest of the country, where — at least until this week’s cluster in Adelaide — social-distancing measures have been easing for months amid virtually zero community transmission of the virus.

Hospitality workers remain the hardest hit from the pandemic, with 26 per cent fewer roles in the sector in Victoria, ­versus 16 per cent fewer food and ­accommodation jobs nationally.