Unemployment in Australia is at something of a crossroads at the moment, and if predictions made by the International Monetary Fund – i.e. A bunch of cool cats who know what they’re talking about – are anything to go by, then times are only going to get tougher.
The IMF fully expects that, over the coming two years, Australia will develop the second worst rate of unemployment in the entire Asia-Pacific region, second only to that of the Philippines.
Economists are fully expecting the country’s official rate of unemployment to be 6.2 percent when figures are released tomorrow. Through the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report, released yesterday, global economic volatility, combined with the waning mining boom, will see that figure remain at around those levels – with scope for mild fluctuation – through 2015. The Philippines is the only country with a higher rate of unemployment in the region, with its unemployment sitting at around 6.9 percent.
This news continues a particularly grim train of development within the job seeking sector, particularly for young people. Unemployment for people aged between 15 and 24 remains at close to 15 percent. Whilst the rate of participation has dropped over the years due to more young people choosing to attend TAFE and University, this rate still represents a number of young unemployed people not seen for over 20 years.
The (somewhat) good news, however, is that the Abbott Government appears set to soften their highly controversial reforms to job seeking allowances such as Newstart, with the announcement late yesterday that the proposed mandatory amount of applications a job seeker needs to submit has been wound back from the proposed 40 positions per month back to the current rate of 20, after enormous negative public backlash to the reforms.
The proposed six month waiting period to receive the Newstart allowance is also under heavy fire, with the Parliament’s joint human rights committee last month finding the proposal to be incompatible with people’s right to equality and non-discrimination based on age, as well as incompatible with the right to social security and an adequate standard of living.
With renewed turmoil in unstable regions of the world such as Ukraine or the Middle East yet to have an economic impact on developed nations, it’s entirely possible that the local employment market still has distance to fall before it begins to recover.
Photo: Spencer Platt via Getty Images.
