Tuesday, 26 March 2024
    02
    Jun
    020620

    COVID-19 job losses slow

    COVID-19 job losses are slowing, economists believe, with the JobKeeper program said to soften the blow of the coronavirus financial impact, resulting in an employment bounce in sectors most affected by the lockdown measures, My Business reports.

    According to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), while payroll jobs have fallen over the seven weeks from mid-March to early May by 7.3 per cent, or almost 950,000 workers, the latest data has signalled a let-up in the pace of job losses from mid-April to early May.

    “The week-to-week changes are much smaller than they were early in the COVID-19 period,” said the head of labour statistics at the ABS, Bjorn Jarvis.

    “The decrease in the number of jobs in the week end[ed] 2 May was 1.1 per cent, which was only slightly larger than the 0.9 [of a percentage point] increase in the week end[ed] 25 April,” Mr Jarvis said.

    The data also revealed that in addition to an overall let-up in job losses, some industries are also showing a reduced impact in the most recent weeks.

    “The accommodation and food services industry had lost around a third of payroll jobs (33.3 per cent) by the week end[ed] 11 April, and a subsequent increase in jobs saw this reduce to around 27.1 per cent by the week end[ed] 2 May,” Mr Jarvis said.

    Additionally, arts and recreation services saw a number of job returns, as did the retail sector.

    Commenting on the latest figures, the team at Deloitte opined that the situation would have been “much worse” without the federal government’s $130 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy.

    Deloitte Access Economics partner David Rumbens explained that Australia’s economic recovery is expected to begin in late 2020 before accelerating in 2021 as travel bans are slowly lifted.

    FULL STORY

    COVID-19 job losses slow, validating JobKeeper (My Business)