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Jobs grow despite stimulus cut

The number of Australians on JobSeeker fell by 20,500 over the two weeks to April 9.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: Gary Ramage
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: Gary Ramage

The number of Australians on JobSeeker fell by 20,500 over the two weeks to April 9 — the first concrete evidence that the end of JobKeeper has not triggered a wave of newly unemployed.

New figures from the Department of Social Services showed there were 1,275,900 JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (Other) recipients in the fortnight to early April, versus 1,296,413 in the previous period to March 26.

Speaking in Perth ahead of the public release of the DSS figures, Josh Frydenberg said the economy had shown an “enormous amount of resilience” through the pandemic.

With the labour market recovering much more quickly than anticipated, the Treasurer criticised those who had called on the Morrison government to extend the JobKeeper wage subsidy beyond the end of March.

“The early signs — and it’s still too early to reach a definitive position — are that we haven’t seen those long lines outside Centrelink, that the economy’s finding its level, that people are getting back to work,” he said.

There were more than a million workers still on JobKeeper at the start of the year, and Treasury has estimated that up to 150,000 of those could lose their jobs following the end of the program last month.

The Reserve Bank and private sector economists have forecast that the transition off wage subsidies would pause the sharply downward trend of the unemployment rate, which in March reached 5.6 per cent, versus the peak of 7.5 per cent in July.

While still early days, the fall in dole recipients in early April suggests the Treasury forecasts may yet prove overly pessimistic.

The most recent labour force statistics revealed fewer workers on zero hours than before the health crisis — a cohort identified by Treasury as most vulnerable to losing jobs when emergency income support ended.

The encouraging DSS figures come as NAB’s quarterly business survey shows firms are gearing up for an expected lift in demand, with a question aimed at determining investment intentions climbing to its highest level since the mid-1990s.

Expectations regarding the next three months for business conditions, and intentions around employment and capital expenditure, were well above their pre-COVID levels and close to 10-year highs.

NAB chief economist Alan Oster said taken together, the broad strength in the survey’s leading indicators “suggests that the recovery should continue at a relatively strong pace”.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/indigenous/jobs-grow-despite-stimulus-cut/news-story/0ec22d3de2f24659a7d348ad7d4c059d