Employment to Population Ratio Paints a Bleak Jobs Picture
Friday, November 7, 2014 12:02 am
The Bureau of Statistics has the jobs numbers back on track. It has reworked its seasonal adjustment process to remove the wild gyrations of recent months that had called into question the entire survey and produced a new set of numbers for October that it believes represents the truth - and they are awful.
The best guide to the state of employment is the Employment to Population Ratio. It measures the proportion of the adult population in work, unaffected by the proportion of those not working who choose to define themselves as unemployed. It has sunk to a ten-year low.
In October and also in September only 60.5 per cent of the working age population was in a job. (Unrounded the proportion was 60.53 in October up from 60.50 in September, so if the government really wants to it can argue there has been an improvement.)
The proportions haven't been that low since December 2004. They were never that low at any time during the Rudd/Gillard government or at any time during the global financial crisis.
Disturbingly, apart from a brief blip in March, the employment to population ratio has been sinking during the Tony Abbott's entire first year in office. He was elected with an employment to population ratio of 61.1 per cent. In a year in which Australia's working-age population has climbed by 1.9 per cent, the number of Australians with jobs has climbed just 0.9 per cent.
The Coalition promised one million jobs in five years. In its first year in office it has delivered 105,500. In a year in which Australia's working-age population grew 1.9 per cent, the number of Australians with jobs grew just 0.9 per cent.
For Victoria, about to face a state election, the figures are dire. Victoria's unemployment rate is 6.8 per cent, the highest since 2001. Only Tasmania and Queensland have worse unemployment. Victoria's employment to population ratio is 60.2 per cent, well down on the 62.5 per cent the Coalition inherited when it took office.
Riding high in relative terms are NSW and Western Australia. The NSW unemployment rate is just 5.7 per cent, Western Australia's is 5.2 per cent. The national unemployment rate is 6.2 per cent, higher than it was in the global financial crisis and the highest since 2002.