Post by Banjo on Feb 28, 2011 16:30:54 GMT 7
In one sphere joblessness keeps growing
IT'S not only the weather that keeps reminding us of the old saw about Australia as a land of contrasts.
On Thursday, the unemployment rate fell to 5 per cent, down from 5.6 per cent a year earlier, and continuing the long-term trend downwards.
In 1999, almost 630,000 people were receiving the Newstart allowance, the main unemployment benefit. By 2008, this had fallen to just under 400,000. The global financial crisis and the recession we almost had sent this back up to 572,000 at the start of last year, but it had fallen to 539,000 by last month.
As measures of our economic health the unemployment rate and the numbers on unemployment benefits are flawed, since they don't tell us how many people are working fewer hours than they would like, or how many have been discouraged from looking for work, although those numbers also have been heading mainly downwards.
Still, together with other indicators, they show the Australian economy motoring along nicely.
As for Australian society, that's another story. The disability support pension goes to people with a physical, intellectual or psychiatric impairment likely to last for at least two years without significant improvement and who are unable to work at least 15 hours a week. At least, that's what the rules say.
In 1982, almost 217,000 people were receiving the DSP. Every year since, without fail, come boom or bust, the figure has been going up. By 1989, it was 308,000. Ten years later, it had reached 578,000. Another decade on, in 2009, it stood at 757,000. And it is now heading, seemingly inexorably, to more than 800,000.
In the 27 years that Australia's population rose by 44 per cent, the numbers on a disability pension went up by 250 per cent.
No, they are not all, or even mostly, bludgers, though there is a connection between unemployment and the DSP.
Writing in The Australian in November, Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin said claims for the disability pension grew from about 2300 a week to about 3000 a week during the GFC, before returning to close to previous levels. Moreover, she added that more than a third of those on DSP moved on to it from unemployment benefits.
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/in-one-sphere-joblessness-keeps-growing/story-e6frg6zo-1225987955460
IT'S not only the weather that keeps reminding us of the old saw about Australia as a land of contrasts.
On Thursday, the unemployment rate fell to 5 per cent, down from 5.6 per cent a year earlier, and continuing the long-term trend downwards.
In 1999, almost 630,000 people were receiving the Newstart allowance, the main unemployment benefit. By 2008, this had fallen to just under 400,000. The global financial crisis and the recession we almost had sent this back up to 572,000 at the start of last year, but it had fallen to 539,000 by last month.
As measures of our economic health the unemployment rate and the numbers on unemployment benefits are flawed, since they don't tell us how many people are working fewer hours than they would like, or how many have been discouraged from looking for work, although those numbers also have been heading mainly downwards.
Still, together with other indicators, they show the Australian economy motoring along nicely.
As for Australian society, that's another story. The disability support pension goes to people with a physical, intellectual or psychiatric impairment likely to last for at least two years without significant improvement and who are unable to work at least 15 hours a week. At least, that's what the rules say.
In 1982, almost 217,000 people were receiving the DSP. Every year since, without fail, come boom or bust, the figure has been going up. By 1989, it was 308,000. Ten years later, it had reached 578,000. Another decade on, in 2009, it stood at 757,000. And it is now heading, seemingly inexorably, to more than 800,000.
In the 27 years that Australia's population rose by 44 per cent, the numbers on a disability pension went up by 250 per cent.
No, they are not all, or even mostly, bludgers, though there is a connection between unemployment and the DSP.
Writing in The Australian in November, Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin said claims for the disability pension grew from about 2300 a week to about 3000 a week during the GFC, before returning to close to previous levels. Moreover, she added that more than a third of those on DSP moved on to it from unemployment benefits.
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/in-one-sphere-joblessness-keeps-growing/story-e6frg6zo-1225987955460
