PM promises 1.3 million jobs over next five years if re-elected

Spruiking the government’s economic credentials on the campaign trail, PM says he will hit extra jobs pledge in five years..

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s first stop on the campaign trail was on the South Coast of NSW. Picture: Jason Edwards

Scott Morrison has pledged to ­create 1.3 million jobs over the next five years and put employment growth at the centre of the Coalition’s economic plan if he is re-elected on May 21.

The Prime Minister will announce the major jobs package on the hustings in Sydney ahead of updated labour force figures being released on Thursday, which are expected to reveal the unemployment rate falling below 4 per cent.

Mr Morrison, who visited the East Coast Canning factory in the southern NSW electorate of Gilmore on Monday, said “we’ve got the runs on the board, and proven plans to deliver these 1.3 million new jobs”. In a repeat of a 2019 election promise to create 1.25 million jobs by 2024, Mr Morrison said measures in last month’s budget, including small business tax incentives to upskill workers, ­extending the apprentice wage subsidy program and ploughing billions into infrastructure and manufacturing, would create jobs.

The Australian understands the upgraded employment growth forecast will incorporate further job-creating measures to be announced over coming weeks.

“Our tax relief for workers and small business, our investments in skills and trades, and our support for our local manufacturing sector mean we can get more people into more jobs,” Mr Morrison said.

“My government has created 50 per cent more jobs than what we saw when Labor faced the GFC, despite an economic crisis with the pandemic that was 30 times bigger. Boosting jobs creation to the levels we saw even ­before the pandemic is key to our plan for a stronger economy.”

Ahead of the 2013 election, former prime minister Tony Abbott promised the Coalition would put a million Australians into work. The mark was reached in 2018 under Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Morrison’s pledge to grow employment by 1.3 million would match the experience over the five years to January 2020 and immediately before the pandemic, putting further downward pressure on an unemployment rate ­approaching near 50-year lows.

ANZ senior economist Catherine Birch said employment would need to rise by roughly 1.06 million a year to keep the jobless measure steady, if population growth returned to pre-pandemic levels and the workforce participation rate was unchanged.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers on Monday broadened the economic debate away from the headline unemployment rate and towards the cost of living and weak wages growth. “Even with that unemployment rate falling in welcome ways to back where it was during the last Labor government at one point (the jobless rate dropped as low as 4 per cent in 2008), we’ve still got real wages going backwards,” Dr Chalmers said.

“We’ve still got everything going up except people’s wages, we’ve still got this trillion dollars in debt and not enough to show for it, and no plan for a stronger economy beyond the election. We’re happy to have a contest on the economy during this election. The Prime Minister says he wants that too. We say, ‘bring it on’.”

Official labour force numbers for March, due on Thursday, should show the jobless measure dropped below 4 per cent for the first time since August 1974.

Ms Birch predicted the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures would show unemployment fell to 3.8 per cent last month, and that the jobless measure would fall to as low as 3.3 per cent by the final quarter of 2022.

Josh Frydenberg said Australia’s economy had outperformed other major advanced economies through the pandemic with “more people in work and fewer people on welfare”.

“We have seen a $103bn turnaround in the budget bottom line. The largest and fastest improvement to the budget bottom line in over 70 years,” the Treasurer said.

“Anthony Albanese and Labor don’t have a plan for the economy and for jobs and can’t be trusted to manage the budget,” Mr Frydenberg said.

Jobs lost after the 2020 pandemic lockdowns recovered in 12 months, with the unemployment rate returning to pre-crisis levels over the same period. Following the early 1990s recession, employment took more than four times as long to recover and the unemployment rate increased from about 6 per cent to more than 11 per cent.

Employment Minister Stuart Robert said “when Labor last came to office, the jobless rate was a little over 4 per cent … when they left government six years later, unemployment was 5.7 per cent and rising and there were 54,300 fewer young people with jobs”.

In an embarrassing campaign gaffe, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese on Monday failed to name the unemployment and cash rates.

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