Underemployment, Loneliness, and Unaffordable Housing
Channel: Daily Insight
Date: 12/09/2019

A report released yesterday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare titled, “Australia’s Welfare 2019”, shows the key trends in Australia’s social support, housing, education, and employment. Australia spends about 10.9% of its GDP on welfare putting it below the OECD median. Finland and other European countries spend much more on welfare than do countries like the UK, Australia, the United States, and Canada. Unemployment in Australia has stayed relatively stable hovering around the 5 to 6% mark over the last decade. It’s currently sitting at 5.2%. Remember, however, that employment is defined as having only worked one hour a week or more (so you could be earning as little as $19.49 a week and still be classified as ‘employed’). And to be considered unemployed, you must be actively looking for work. So if you’ve given up looking for work, guess what, you’re not unemployed. The rate of long-term unemployment has increased from 15% in 2009 to 25% in 2018. So one in four unemployed people have been looking for work for more than a year without success. That is, they can’t even find one hour of work per week. However, if we look at underemployment, we can see that the rates are significantly higher and have been steadily trending upwards over the last decade.

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#unemployment #welfare #australianeconomy