Jul

10

Labour market

July 10, 2009 | 1 Comment | Mark Crosby

The unemployment numbers yesterday were again remarkably good relative to what is happening elsewhere in the world. The headline u/e rate is up to 5.8%. Since July last year we’ve lost about 160,000 full time jobs, but part time jobs are up about 127,000. Of course we need to create jobs to stop the unemployment rate from rising, but compare these numbers with the US. Paul Krugman this week pointed out that the US has lost  more than 6 million jobs since the recession started, and it needed to create 8 million jobs to stop the unemployment rate from rising over the same period. The US labour market is roughly 12 times bigger than ours, so equivalent job losses in the Australian market would be roughly 500,000 jobs – instead we’ve lost only about 30,000. The number of unemployed has risen from 484,000 to 662,000 in Australia – thankfully, in terms of labour market behaviour we have become very much decoupled from the US.


Comments

One Response to “Labour market”

  1. Janet Brown on July 14th, 2009 4:45 am

    Our leaders in Washington must seriously consider new and innovative policies that promote a better, more confident, prosperous, and secure America in the 21st century. One of the things I think we can do to help make that happen is support American businesses and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (<a href=”http://bit.ly/oanAT”>http://bit.ly/oanAT</a>). They’re doing things to reach out and show people that they can get involved, too.