About 250,000 Sydney employees stood down in latest lockdown

The devastating impact of Delta restrictions on workers in the nation’s biggest city have been laid bare.

Stay-at-home orders in Sydney have triggered a massive decline in the number of payrolled jobs. Picture: James Gourley

About 250,000 workers were stood down over the first five weeks of Greater Sydney’s Delta lockdown, equivalent to the loss of nearly one in 10 payrolled jobs.

Between June 26 – when the latest round of restrictions started – and July 31, the number of NSW workers paid through the Taxation Office’s single-touch payroll system plunged by 7.1 per cent, the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics report shows.

That was more than three times the 2 per cent fall recorded across the rest of Australia over the same period. In Greater Sydney, the number of payroll jobs crashed by 8.9 per cent.

Westpac senior economist Justin Smirk said “Sydney is being hit at least as hard, if not harder, this time than it was in early 2020”.

Over the five weeks, payroll jobs worked by women in NSW were down 7.5 per cent and 6.6 per cent for men, with the male-dominated construction sector in the state recording a 10 per cent drop in jobs over the back half of the month as Sydney building sites were shut down.

Job losses also grew in customer-facing industries such as arts and recreation, and hospi­tality. In NSW, some 25 per cent of payrolled workers have been stood down in these two sectors over the five weeks to July 31, the figures show. Nationally, hospitality and arts and recreation jobs have fallen by 6-7 per cent over the same period.

The latest ABS payrolls report covers the two weeks to July 31, and during that time payroll jobs nationally dropped by 2 per cent, led by a 3.7 per cent fall in NSW and a 4.9 per cent drop in Sydney.

ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the latest fortnight of data coincided with tightening restrictions in the fourth and fifth weeks of NSW’s lockdown, including the pause in construction activity.

That two-week period also included lockdowns in Victoria and South Australia, and travel and border restrictions across all states and territories.

Outside of NSW, the largest payroll job falls over the second half of July were in South Australia (down 2.7 per cent), and Victoria and Queensland, which both recorded declines of 1.3 per cent.