They say the current unemployment in Australia sits at 5.2%. I don't really know if this 5.2% figure is as solid as the kind of unemployment figures we used to have back in the late 1980s when unemployment perpetually seemed to sit at 8.5%. Youth unemployment in my youth regularly sat at 15%-17%, and you would see these figures in the news and you'd think, "wow, that's a lot of people who are out of work."
Those were the days. Of course, that gave way to the Howard government reorganising both welfare and the way in which unemployment was measured, resulting in the downward trend of these numbers in the years since.
Still, it turns out that Roy Morgan tracks unemployment figures in the old way, and they think the real figure sits at about 9.3%. Of course, the folks at Roy Morgan then go on to say it's the IR laws' fault and the government needs to make things more flexible for employers to hire (and fire) people - because that's exactly what the part-timers are looking for. They're not the only people who see a problem with this figure.
In September, there were 85,100 who wanted to work and were looking for it but could not start within the survey week, so don't fit the standard definition.
And there were another 1,216,700 who wanted to work but said they had not actively looked for work in the four weeks leading up to the call from the ABS.
The people in those two groups, just over 1.3 million, might be termed the non-unemployed jobless.
Combined with the officially unemployed, the number of jobless people who want to work is 1,934,400 - more than three times the number who fit the official definition of unemployment.
And they make up 14.4 per cent of an extended version of the labour force totalling 13.45 million.
It's a lot more than 5.2 per cent.
So, as you can see, the ABS tells us that the unemployment figure might be as high as 14.4%.
Which got me to be thinking a few things. The first thing that popped int my head was the brazen crookedness of the politicians that figured out a way of making the unemployment figure look smaller than it really is, just so they can make out that they've actually done something positive when clearly, they haven't.And there's not a damn thing we can do about it except point it out and keep it in plain sight.
The second thing that pops into my head is how little thought has been given to what kind of workforce Australia should have in light of the post-industrial, late capitalist world we find ourselves in. The rapid expansion of the service sector in the last 20years coincides with the massive casualisation of the workforce. While politicians talk up increases in guaranteed superannuation, it sort of misses the point that the casualised part of the labour force and the self-employed are likely to forgo the benefits of superannuation. (If there's actually been one big lie, it's been superannuation, but that's another topic for a gripe and a rant).
The third thing that popped int my head was, what the hell future governments are going to do when all these people hit retirement age? These people are most likely going to have massive shortfalls in their superannuation and suddenly the government is going to have to pay them a pension. Future governments are essentially going to be the victims of the predecessors who believed their own bogus figures and planned accordingly.
The fourth thing that occurred to me was that I was pondering all this in spite of having a job. I'm thinking about this because the world being what it is, my position is as precarious as any other person who is not locked in to institutions, government or the big end of town's corporate bodies. So even if one has some kind of job or going concern, you have to think about this stuff.
The sneaking suspicion I have about how they re-jigged how they calculate unemployment (They keep telling us it's to bring us in line with how the rest of the world does it) is that it's a figure that is brandished at the unemployed to say, "look, you have no excuses, there are jobs out there so go get them!"; when in fact if the real unemployment is sitting between 9.3% and 14.4%, then the state of the economy is clearly and manifestly much worse than presented by those who would brandish the 5.2% figure. It was bad way back when; but things are arguably worse now than back then because the government is believing its own spin in the worst way.
And yet, it is remarkably like how they changed the way they calculate the CPI (again, to bring it in line with how the rest of the world does it) and magically the CPI comes in much lower than the actual cost of living. In both instances, with unemployment and inflation - it appears that governments around the world have invented a way of measuring such things in such a way as to make it seem much smaller.
Still, it's a funny thing. If unemployment were higher than measured, the RBA would have to be lowering interest rates. If inflation was running higher than the current CPI measured, then the RBA would have to raise interest rates. For once, the RBA might be right in not doing anything, month after month. It is entirely possible that the margin that they are misreading both unemployment and inflation cancel each other out. I don't know if that can be sustained, but right now, this seems to be the case. This contradiction might also be why the RBA has not made a movement in some months. The two speed economy is too divergent in both directions, that the RBA has no choice but to stay in the middle by doing nothing.
Do I Trust Julia Gillard?
I'm going to some focus group on Thursday night, presumably to be probed about keywords the government can use to woo me back to voting ALP. Maybe it's the Liberal Party trying to figure out how to mount arguments that destroy the ALP's chances. I don't know and never will, but these things are always a it of fun.
As long time readers here know, my own views on the next Federal election are already fixed - I'm Don Quivote! - so I'm going to have a lot of fun giving these people a piece of my mind. My best advice to politicians at this point in time is "get a dog up ya'." That goes equally to Obama and Romney as it does to Gillard and Abbott. "Get a dog up ya!"
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