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Does WA get a fair deal?
Those of you who are not from Western Australia will be unaware of Paul Murray, and for that I envy you. Murray is like Paul Kelly without the sparkling wit and partisan neutrality. His stentorian...
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The cash rate cringe
The ABS released the results of its August Labour Force survey today. Unemployment fell from 5.3% to 5.1% in one month. There were 30 900 more employed Australians in August than in July, with full...
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Oh no! Unionists!
The Financial Review ran an article on its front cover yesterday about the perils of wage inflation (it’s paywalled, so no use linking). Wages are apparently rising at an unsustainable level,...
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Trends in teenage unemployment
I’d like to quickly address this claim made by RBS, reported by Christopher Joye: teenage unemployment has fallen, but at 16½% it is still very high as many youths have found it hard to get a job with...
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Chart of the day: how much work is out there?
It’s hard to sum up the state of the labour market in one statistic, but that doesn’t stop us trying. The most commonly used figure is of course the unemployment rate, but that can hide some...
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Has Joe Hockey promised the end of the Australian safety net?
Joe Hockey has called for an “end to the age of entitlement”. He added on Lateline that “we need to compare ourselves with our Asian neighbours where the entitlements programs of the state are far less...
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The inadequacy of Newstart
When the Hawke Government came to power in March 1983, the unemployment benefit for a single adult was worth $192 in today’s dollars. By the time Labor left office in 1996, it had lifted the real...
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Has the unemployment rate been manipulated?
TL;DR version: no, it has not. Last night, the ABC unfortunately saw fit to give a platform to a spot of statistical scaremongering that has been floating around for a while: the idea that there’s...
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The latest attack on the Fair Work Act
I have a new piece at Guardian Australia, responding to Peter Reith’s claim that the rise in unemployment is due to the Fair Work Act.
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Statistics at the mercy of a slanted interpretation
Three types of blog posts I’m sick of writing, and I’m sure you’re sick of reading, are generic defences of the Fair Work Act, angry screeds against predictable partisanship from The Australian, and...
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Unemployment benefits: we’re not in 1996 anymore
Peter Martin has an interesting piece regarding the Commission of Audit in today’s Fairfax papers. He looks back at the 1996 Commission of Audit to draw some lessons for the current Commission. He...
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Ageing and the participation rate: an update
After reaching an all-time high of 65.8% in November 2010, the proportion of people aged 15+ who are either in work or actively looking for work has declined sharply, hitting 64.8% in October this...
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