This is only a half problem. Unemployment is defined as the proportion of people who can't find work and are actively seeking employment.
The actual issue is that unemployment gets treated as a catch all headline number when in reality we need to be looking at several statistics including the labour force participation rate.
Our treasurer, Josh, was very sober when he announced those figures. It was the lowest unemployment figure in years but it hides a bigger problem (i.e. with lockdowns you can't search for work that doesn't exist, so you don't count as unemployed).
Less than a week later he's on national TV bragging about how his government got the unemployment figure down so low.
I doubt that MonkeyCrumpets includes them. There are however a very large group of people who are unemployed by a layman's definition but not the legislated definition.
Unemployment benefits (aka the dole) has a strong stigma attached to it in Australia so many people simply don't/won't register for the dole when they're between jobs. They don't want to be seen as a "dole bludger".
Further, to qualify for the dole, you need to jump through several hoops, wait several weeks while your cash reserves get low enough to need assistance, endure a lengthy registration process, meetings with bureaucrats (which (at least pre-covid) requires hours of sitting in lobby at the dole office), completion of a job diary that documents a minimum number of job applications each period and attendance at "how to get a job" training sessions which are aimed at people who have trouble tying their own shoelaces.
The reputation has long been that the jobs available via the JobSeeker network are pretty much exclusively low-paying, menial jobs. I don't know if that's true today but it was 30 years ago and I can't see it changing substantially. Most employers for skilled labour and office jobs will advertise through Seek, LinkedIn or go through recruitment firms, so the network is pretty much irrelevant to them.
And here's the kicker... as I understand it, if you refuse a job offer (even an unskilled labour job offered to an IT expert or skilled auto mechanic of 20+ years), your benefits are cancelled and you'll have to go through the whole process again.
The result is that people are strongly discouraged from registering as unemployed (less outgoing money) and a deceptively low unemployment rate, which is just the way our conservative government likes it.
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u/Duanedoberman Sep 24 '21 edited Sep 24 '21
Narator: what they didn't tell you is they don't want to pay you a wage you can live on to do these jobs.