What do you guys make of this?

Roy Morgan is reporting the highest ever recorded unemployment rate of 10.3%. Including underemployment - people who want more work - that makes for 1.28mil people looking for work in Australia.

The graph is pretty amazing:



The spike in '09 is obviously the GFC debacle, but the difference between the Bureau of Statistics and Roy Morgan data is very significant.

I guess a big part of it would be what does 'unemployment' actually mean? (It's a contentious term).

I guess it just comes down to what rules you use to define unemployment. For example the government might only consider people who are on unemployment benfits to be unemployed where morgans might also consider other unemployed people living off savings etc.

I guess it just comes down to what rules you use to define unemployment. For example the government might only consider people who are on unemployment benfits to be unemployed where morgans might also consider other unemployed people living off savings etc.

This. The government also counts ft students as employed if I recall correctly.

I have reached a point where i no longer believe any of the figures supplied by the government.

One of the big numbers claims that shit me for their lack of verifiability are the "we just created this project that will create 20,000 new jobs"... why do i never see any jobs advertised on that project or by ancilliary companies

Numbers mean what ever you need them to as far as the government is concerned, and i think that applies to Labor and the Libs

You dont have to "hear" anything. The ABS is a public service so everything is documented online.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/6202.0Glossary1Dec%202011?opendocument&tabname=Notes&prodno=6202.0&issue=Dec%202011&num=&view= is their glossary, and covers what the ABS mean by Employed

Nah, looking for work is a fair way of calculating the jobless rate as it is referring to the state of the job market. People not looking for work like students are not part of the market and are mostly irrelevant as an indicator for the market.

It'd be deceptive if it didn't count long term unemployed who have given up looking for work though as that'd be a pretty worthwhile indicator of the jobless market.

I worked at centrelink during the Howard government, and prior to elections and budget announcements, the things that qualified someone to get a pension would change, this allowed a lot of job seekers to change from looking to work to on a pension, thus changing the unemployment figures.

I worked at centrelink during the Howard government, and prior to elections and budget announcements, the things that qualified someone to get a pension would change, this allowed a lot of job seekers to change from looking to work to on a pension, thus changing the unemployment figures.

No-one has suggested its only the ALP which toys with the unemployment figures. If you will recall Keating's monstrosity where he opened up the disability pension for anything above a broken nail so he could boast low unemployment figures. It then took Howard a couple of terms to gradually get disability back to its proper meaning - rendering you incapable of physical work - and costs billions as disabled pensioners got paid more.

Howard changed the definitions to suit an agenda, a pretext to lower rates and start the housing boom.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbytitle/C9268F9DB356D154CA256A950080B3E3?OpenDocument
Blam instant employment.

Also of note, the same funny figure juggling the yanks use

Have you ever wondered why the CPI, GDP and employment numbers run counter to your personal and business experiences? The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government reporting.

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

We need a figure for 'under-employment' as well.

last edited by sLaps_Forehead at 12:22:18 04/Feb/12

Shall we count children and the retired as unemployed too?

Unemployment is an attempt to measure how effective our economy's ability at providing jobs to our workforce. Its not particularly important how many people dont have a job and dont want one.

We need a figure for 'under-employment' as well.

The ABS track that too, its just not a headline figure. http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/meisubs.nsf/0/066A05FB703E40DBCA257989000BFFCE/$File/62020_dec%202011.pdf page 26

america is a gigantic modern productivity powerhouse, its not that surprising. its not like they don't have the infrastructure to support it.

Personally I would prefer that it was less simple than employed / unemployed.

I would be happy if it was in a series of categories.

- full time employed
- part time employed
- part time employed and seeking full time employment (probably too hard to do but could instead be "has multiple part time jobs")
- unemployed and seeking employment
- unemployed and enrolled in full time study
- unemployed and just leeching off society (this would include addresses and names)
- retired

yeah well shadowstats count all of that. their reckoning is that 20% of americans are unemployed and the headline figure of 10% is bullshit.. which is on the money.

their economy is totally fucked unless youre a hedge fund employee or like working 3 service industry jobs at no minimum wage, unable to join a union because collective bargaining is illegal in your state and million of illegal immigrants doing the job for less.

what a country

I seem to remember a government banging on about how it brought unemployment to an all time low, when all they really did was change the definition?

But recruitment agents might want to give the impression that there is an inundation of applicants that they must work hard to sift through. If there are it's probably mostly instant rejects like chinese and indian.

The unemployment rate is hardly the only labour market related data that the ABS publishes, but they use the standard definition of unemployment when calculating the headline unemployment figure. They also release type of employment, participation rate, breakdowns of people not in the labour force etc, so you can certainly adjust the figures yourself to address almost any concern listed in this thread.

Oh, and for whoever mentioned shadowstats...you're aware that their "methodology" is generally to take the government figure and add/multiply it by x, right?

It will be interesting to see whether the Roy Morgan unemployment change is reflected in the next set of ABS data.

ABS employment data is taken by phone survey. they don't actually verify it through hard reporting. i used to be on the ABS phone list many years ago.