With immaculate timing, jobs data for February emerged showing a robust — so far — employment recovery at exactly the moment the government was insisting the defeat of its industrial relations bill would harm jobs growth.
“If they don’t want to support these job-making initiatives,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said about the Senate after it trashed his legislation, “that is on them.” That came only a couple of hours after we learnt the economy had created nearly 90,000 new jobs — all full-time — in February.
It seems the current jobs market is working pretty well — despite the Coalition and business groups insisting it isn’t.
There’ll be one more month of good jobs growth in March and then the impact of the withdrawal of JobKeeper will arrive, particularly in regional communities. And that, of course, is on Morrison — not the Senate.
Australian employment is back to where it was before the pandemic, which is excellent news — a tribute to Morrison and Josh Frydenberg’s fiscal stimulus, the Reserve Bank’s (RBA) emergency monetary policy measures, and the states’ handling of the pandemic.
But the bigger story — once we see what impact the withdrawal of JobKeeper has — is wages growth. That’s the main economic game for the RBA, which wants to see wages growth in the high threes or fours before it will countenance tightening monetary policy.
The government’s industrial relations bill was always about undermining, not supporting, wages growth by supporting increased casualisation and making it easier to cut wages. One of the few protective measures for workers — criminalising wage theft — was stripped out by the government yesterday in a fit of pique.
Part-time minister Christian Porter gets to avoid responsibility for the defeat courtesy of his mental health/consult the defo laywers leave, but Michaelia Cash — the deputy leader in the Senate and one of apparently several ministers doing Porter’s job for him — gets to wear it. One wonders if Mathias Cormann might have got more of the bill over the line. Maybe he can make some calls from Paris.
Remember: this bill began life as a proposed “Kumbaya” moment of national unity with employers, unions and the government getting together in a spirit of pandemic-enforced harmony to agree to a set of reforms. Very quickly — amid divisions among employer groups — it reverted to an attack on unions, with the government belatedly pulling a “worse off overall” test from its back pocket for companies who could claim to have been affected by the pandemic.
The whole exercise serves to demonstrate that employer groups will never give up on their quest to remove industrial relations protections and lower wages growth.
Australian workers have endured a wages growth strike from employers for nearly a decade, and it shows no signs of ending — even if the media doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Yet we’re still talking about the need for more flexibility and greater powers to lower wages and conditions. Even on the day when the job market showed a stunning recovery.
“One of the few protective measures for workers — criminalising wage theft — was stripped out by the government yesterday in a fit of pique.”
Yesterday I was trying to follow the passage of this legislation and I wondered why the criminalising of wage theft was stripped out when everyone seemed to support it. A fit of pique sounds right especially when one considers Cash’s previous actions when she does not get her own way.
The drop in the Unemployment rate has nothing to do with any other Policies of the Federal Government, except One – International Border Closure.
We are currently not importing workers, so jobs are actually going to Australian workers.
That and the fact the poor finally have a disposable income – this government will have to change that.
It really is that plain & simple.
Today KPMG chief economist Brendan Rynne said
““The loss of skilled younger migrants will represent a substantial hit to our GDP given that fewer working-age people would be supporting older Australians, and there would be a loss in productivity since the immigration program is deliberately tilted towards skilled migrants including university students and graduates.”
Seems an easy equation to grasp – fewer migrants & dodgy visa holders taking jobs despite rampant wage theft means more chance of citizens finding a job.
Must be galling for the big ar$ed end of town.
Our population dropped in the Sep 2020 quarter, so according to the xenophobes, that should mean less competition for those elusive ‘jobs’.
Do you have any facts to support that proposition?
Especially in light of news that a labour hire firm engaged in the agricultural industry reported that farmers didn’t want locals.
yes for obvious reasons locals generally know their rights… nor did many of the labour hire firms want locals, where they had transport and accommodation integrated into their cut…
The employment situation is not back to pre pandemic levels. If you do not look at the hours worked data, and you know you get onto the employed side of the un/employment ledger by working just an hour a week then it is not at pre pandemic levels. The difference is significant because it means household incomes have not returned to pre pandemic levels.
As has already been acknowledged the household income before the pandemic was not good enough to cover expenses.
It is correct to say, from the employment numbers point of view, it will be another story when JobKeeper stops and, with JobSeeker’s payment level still being so low, the household income will again take a battering.
In turn, without capacity to spend, there will be fewer financial resources available to boost the economy.
Not a well managed economy, by this Government, at all!
Cheap easy to come by low interest rate debt money will solve the household income problems of boosting the economy..Look at the going through the roof property/house/asset prices..Gangbusters and blue skies all the way,so far ..or faux pas so good ?
On the plus side, it may lose them the next election…..
Only if the electorate had a collective brain transplant.
Join a union and be active in it.Work and strive until we achieve more than 50% union membership and the workers become aware of how they have been dudded all these years.Problem solved.
Not a chance – HawKeating screwed that pooch with the mendaciously named Accord in the 80s, since when it has been all downhill.
And the Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine was poisoned in 2006 – strangely (?) when SerfChoiceless was unleashed.
nope… my Union is doing a great job for me at the moment… worth all the Union membership fees I’ve paid over the years…
I hope that is true.
Yet they keep telling the working class ,Marx got it wrong
Only for the last 150 odd years – pretty soon the penny will drop the proletariat will shake of their chains.
Any. Day. Now.