Ten job seekers/vacancy, unemployment 6% and 13.5% for 15-24 year olds

SpacePete · Jul 28, 2014

Overall unemployment rate now 6%, and 13.5% for 15-24 year olds with growing underemployment, a growing population and declining tax revenues.

Jobs seem to be drying up. Unemployment is increasing.

Where does it end?

The attached article makes a good point that forcing people to apply for more jobs will not make more jobs available.

A chart from an earlier article in January:

A recent article:

Ten job seekers per vacancy: a reality check on welfare overhaul

...

More applications does not make more jobs

The overall unemployment rate is now 6%, and 13.5% for 15-24 year olds. In May there were 146,000 job vacancies with 720,000 people unemployed. Another 920,000 were underemployed and wanting more hours of work. Underemployment is a very important labour market indicator as, under the terms of internationally agreed labour statistics collection, an individual is counted as employed if working one hour a week for pay or profit.

Altogether, these figures mean 1.64 million people who have no work or not enough work are potentially competing for available job vacancies.

While the labour force underutilisation rate of 13.5% suggests that there are around 10 potential job applicants for each vacancy, we need to consider that some sectors of employment will have very large pools of applicants. This applies especially to those jobs with broader skills requirements.

This is the core reality of the Australian job market. The intensification of job search requirements means people receiving Newstart will be coerced into applying for many jobs that they have very little chance of obtaining.

No one suggests that they shouldn't be doing what they can to find a job, but futile applications for jobs serve no purpose but to tick the boxes to receive a payment. It is an immense strain on the unemployed person as if being unemployed and living on Newstart isn't hard enough.

The government might also consider the burden it imposes on employers and employment service providers. Many employers will be inundated with unsuitable applicants. We might speculate that they will be less inclined to advertise positions attracting hundreds of applicants, perhaps opting for more informal means of recruitment.

At the same time, employment service providers will be tasked with pushing unemployed people into inappropriate job search efforts.

More: http://theconversation.com/ten-job-seekers-per-vacancy-a-reality-check-on-welfare-overhaul-29743
Click to expand...

Earlier, from January:

An 800,000-plus jobs gap between 'welfare to work' and reality

The problem is not supply-side inadequacies but the demand for labour: there are far too few jobs on offer.

One of the basic questions that is not asked is whether suitable paid jobs are available and accessible for those on payments that are assumed to encourage entry to paid work. The ABS data on job vacancy trends suggests some serious and increasing lack of vacancies.

...

The claims by the government that the problem is the unemployed, not the lack of jobs, is a major con, too often blindly accepted by the media and the public. Cutting people's payments does not increases their participation level in tight job markets. Their very low payments often fail to cover the costs of looking for unlikely jobs.

More: https://theconversation.com/an-800-000-plus-jobs-gap-between-welfare-to-work-and-reality-22226
Click to expand...

Old Codger · Jul 28, 2014

SP,

"Where does it end?"

When the figures quadruple, or worse! They are at that 4x level in much of the EU right now, what can anyone see to change it?

And when SHTF Day dawns, you can double it again.

OC

SpacePete · Jul 28, 2014

Old Codger said:

SP,

"Where does it end?"

When the figures quadruple, or worse! They are at that 4x level in much of the EU right now, what can anyone see to change it?

And when SHTF Day dawns, you can double it again.

OC
Click to expand...

Before then, maybe we'll see some ideas from the recent conscription thread, i.e., not necessarily direct military conscription, but some form of compulsory national service for those who aren't gainfully employed. Possibilities include building infrastructure such as roads.

Old Codger · Jul 28, 2014

SP,

Very possible, maybe a 'Construction Corps' to build infrastructure all over the country, not picking up bottles and cans but onto the farms, the roads, the hospitals even. Anything where a strong back and arm is needed.

Keynes would be pleased.

OC

SpacePete · Jul 28, 2014

The other question: where will the future jobs come from? What sectors and industries will be able to soak up our growing population?

Housing construction? But there is intense cost pressure for efficiency gains through automation so maybe not much luck there.

Service industries and fast good? Already there are robotic designs that could replace burger flippers within a decade.

Mining? Also automation is making inroads and there could be a slowdown in global demand.

Technology? Outsourced.

...

Some past threads:

http://forums.silverstackers.com/topic-52630-giant-3d-printer-builds-houses-in-china.html
http://forums.silverstackers.com/to...lise-how-many-jobs-will-soon-be-replaced.html
http://forums.silverstackers.com/to...ines-by-the-hundreds-of-thousands-page-1.html
http://forums.silverstackers.com/to...australian-economy-5-million-jobs-page-1.html
http://forums.silverstackers.com/topic-51026-say-hello-to-the-future-and-goodbye-to-your-job.html
http://forums.silverstackers.com/to...isation-google-s-artificial-intelligence.html
http://forums.silverstackers.com/topic-29921-automated-house-construction.html

Old Codger · Jul 28, 2014

Agree!

The future is bleak, and as I have said here before EVERY business in OZ runs on the MINIMUM number of staff required to efficiently run that business. Even a mum and dad business follows that rule, as does BHP and Westpac. As you say, automation is the other job killer, a machine does not get sick, go on holidays, or go on strike for higher wages.

Given that we are exporting our factories (and jobs) to China etc I cannot see anything that will reverse the course we are on.

OC

mmm....shiney! · Jul 28, 2014

SilverPete said:

Overall unemployment rate now 6%, and 13.5% for 15-24 year olds with growing underemployment, a growing population and declining tax revenues.

Jobs seem to be drying up. Unemployment is increasing.

Where does it end?

The attached article makes a good point that forcing people to apply for more jobs will not make more jobs available.

A chart from an earlier article in January:

http://i.imgur.com/YQegOGH.jpg

A recent article:

No one suggests that they shouldn't be doing what they can to find a job, but futile applications for jobs serve no purpose but to tick the boxes to receive a payment. It is an immense strain on the unemployed person as if being unemployed and living on Newstart isn't hard enough.
Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Harder than getting out of bed every morning and going to work?

SilverPete said:

Before then, maybe we'll see some ideas from the recent conscription thread, i.e., not necessarily direct military conscription, but some form of compulsory national service for those who aren't gainfully employed. Possibilities include building infrastructure such as roads.
Click to expand...

What's the difference between forcing the unemployed to look for work and forcing people to do national service????

Whilst I agree with the premise that the solution is not to force the unemployed to apply for jobs that don't exist, the solution is not maintaining the job seekers allowance and making it easy for them but to remove the barriers to the labour market. And the only thing that will increase demand for labour is reducing the price employers pay for it. In other words, scrap minimum wages. Until this concept has dawned on everyone, then stricter controls over spending the public's purse on welfare is the only path that can be taken. If you oppose the scrapping of minimum wages then you are directly responsible for the rising unemployment rate (especially amongst young people) and you are directly responsible for consigning generations to the welfare cycle.

willrocks · Jul 28, 2014

mmm....shiney! said:

Whilst I agree with the premise that the solution is not to force the unemployed to apply for jobs that don't exist, the solution is not maintaining the job seekers allowance and making it easy for them but to remove the barriers to the labour market. And the only thing that will increase demand for labour is reducing the price employers pay for it. In other words, scrap minimum wages. Until this concept has dawned on everyone, then stricter controls over spending the public's purse on welfare is the only path that can be taken. If you oppose the scrapping of minimum wages then you are directly responsible for the rising unemployment rate (especially amongst young people) and you are directly responsible for consigning generations to the welfare cycle.
Click to expand...

And then we'll have a new underclass that work full time but still qualify for full Centerlink. Because they're earning $5 per hour.

It's my opinion that these problems run much deeper than 'minimum wage' laws. The whole system needs a rethink. But that'll never happen until it's too late.

Peter · Jul 28, 2014

Computers, robot machines, heavy machinery have taken the jobs people used to have.
Jobs have moved overseas to increase the profits of the rich.
The government must make people think this is the fault of the unemployed because
part of the government's goal is to seek full employment for the voters.
They cripple the unemployed to avoid any responsibility
and to justify inequality.
Suits the rich.Wages and conditions fall .
Their profits increase.

Solution.
Reduce the working week hours.
Difficult, but must be addressed.
Advances in technology must not just benefit the rich.

SpacePete · Jul 29, 2014

Alternatively, maybe all this concern about the impact of automation is nothing more than modern day Ludditism, and productivity gains from technology along with growing populations will open up vast new opportunities for future employment?

Sympathy for the Luddites
By PAUL KRUGMAN

June 13, 2013
Sympathy for the Luddites
By PAUL KRUGMAN

In 1786, the cloth workers of Leeds, a wool-industry center in northern England, issued a protest against the growing use of "scribbling" machines, which were taking over a task formerly performed by skilled labor. "How are those men, thus thrown out of employ to provide for their families?" asked the petitioners. "And what are they to put their children apprentice to?"

Those weren't foolish questions. Mechanization eventually that is, after a couple of generations led to a broad rise in British living standards. But it's far from clear whether typical workers reaped any benefits during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution; many workers were clearly hurt. And often the workers hurt most were those who had, with effort, acquired valuable skills only to find those skills suddenly devalued.

So are we living in another such era? And, if we are, what are we going to do about it?

Until recently, the conventional wisdom about the effects of technology on workers was, in a way, comforting. Clearly, many workers weren't sharing fully or, in many cases, at all in the benefits of rising productivity; instead, the bulk of the gains were going to a minority of the work force. But this, the story went, was because modern technology was raising the demand for highly educated workers while reducing the demand for less educated workers. And the solution was more education.
...

Today, however, a much darker picture of the effects of technology on labor is emerging. In this picture, highly educated workers are as likely as less educated workers to find themselves displaced and devalued, and pushing for more education may create as many problems as it solves.

I've noted before that the nature of rising inequality in America changed around 2000. Until then, it was all about worker versus worker; the distribution of income between labor and capital between wages and profits, if you like had been stable for decades. Since then, however, labor's share of the pie has fallen sharply. As it turns out, this is not a uniquely American phenomenon. A new report from the International Labor Organization points out that the same thing has been happening in many other countries, which is what you'd expect to see if global technological trends were turning against workers.

And some of those turns may well be sudden. The McKinsey Global Institute recently released a report on a dozen major new technologies that it considers likely to be "disruptive," upsetting existing market and social arrangements. Even a quick scan of the report's list suggests that some of the victims of disruption will be workers who are currently considered highly skilled, and who invested a lot of time and money in acquiring those skills. For example, the report suggests that we're going to be seeing a lot of "automation of knowledge work," with software doing things that used to require college graduates. Advanced robotics could further diminish employment in manufacturing, but it could also replace some medical professionals.

So should workers simply be prepared to acquire new skills? The woolworkers of 18th-century Leeds addressed this issue back in 1786: "Who will maintain our families, whilst we undertake the arduous task" of learning a new trade? Also, they asked, what will happen if the new trade, in turn, gets devalued by further technological advance?

And the modern counterparts of those woolworkers might well ask further, what will happen to us if, like so many students, we go deep into debt to acquire the skills we're told we need, only to learn that the economy no longer wants those skills?

Education, then, is no longer the answer to rising inequality, if it ever was (which I doubt).

So what is the answer? If the picture I've drawn is at all right, the only way we could have anything resembling a middle-class society a society in which ordinary citizens have a reasonable assurance of maintaining a decent life as long as they work hard and play by the rules would be by having a strong social safety net, one that guarantees not just health care but a minimum income, too. And with an ever-rising share of income going to capital rather than labor, that safety net would have to be paid for to an important extent via taxes on profits and/or investment income.

I can already hear conservatives shouting about the evils of "redistribution." But what, exactly, would they propose instead?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html?_r=0
Click to expand...

Old Codger · Jul 29, 2014

My wife's ancestor was a 'Machine Breaker' in Hampshire 1831.

Joined the 'Swing Riots', and ended up with a 7 year all expenses paid holiday to Van Diemens Land.

There Julie, our kids revolutionary credentials!!

OC

TheEnd · Jul 29, 2014

Ther simply ar'nt enough jobs out ther to expect some one on Newstart to apply for 10 jobs per week......And whats going to happen when the car plants close aswell. Unemployment will hit 10%.

hawkeye · Jul 29, 2014

Building a financial, economic and political system around the fact that the majority of people will have full-time 40 hr week jobs, for most of the year, forever, knowing that automation is bringing exponential increases in productivity gains was quite simply brain-dead.

Yet here we are with a financial system which basically depends for it's survival on this fact. Because they just love loading everyone up on debt and that debt has to be serviced somehow. If we didn't have all that debt to service then people wouldn't need as much money, and additionally if we didn't have all the inflation which goes with it, people wouldn't need as much money. Basically, a whole bunch of resources is being wasted on people in the financial sector and people in the public sector.

The financial system needs to be dynamic enough to adjust to changing reality but that doesn't suit the politicians or the banking cartel.

Ever-increasing automation will bring us ever-increasing wealth and prosperity, if we can get the retarded politicians and their crony bankers out of the way.

Old Codger · Jul 29, 2014

I am damned glad i am not a young bloke looking to going into the workforce now.

Those without Year 12 are DOOMED, and those with a useless Uni Degree (Environmental Studies etc etc etc ) are as well.

OC

Peter · Jul 29, 2014

Won't business be pleased dealing with thousands of job applications a week.
May have to employ more just to deal with being snowed under with job applications.

Old Codger · Jul 29, 2014

I would have thought that ONE application a day would have been fair.

OC

hawkeye · Jul 29, 2014

Why do we have this term "underemployment"? Isn't it a good thing if people are generally working less? This has actually been the long-term trend of history for people to have to work less (Sunday used to be the only day people had off).

I just think the whole thing is being approached at the wrong angle. People are looking at the past and assuming the future will be the same, when there was never any reason to think it would be.

mmm....shiney! · Jul 29, 2014

willrocks said:

mmm....shiney! said:

Whilst I agree with the premise that the solution is not to force the unemployed to apply for jobs that don't exist, the solution is not maintaining the job seekers allowance and making it easy for them but to remove the barriers to the labour market. And the only thing that will increase demand for labour is reducing the price employers pay for it. In other words, scrap minimum wages. Until this concept has dawned on everyone, then stricter controls over spending the public's purse on welfare is the only path that can be taken. If you oppose the scrapping of minimum wages then you are directly responsible for the rising unemployment rate (especially amongst young people) and you are directly responsible for consigning generations to the welfare cycle.
Click to expand...

And then we'll have a new underclass that work full time but still qualify for full Centerlink. Because they're earning $5 per hour.

It's my opinion that these problems run much deeper than 'minimum wage' laws. The whole system needs a rethink. But that'll never happen until it's too late.
Click to expand...

What is deeper than "minimum wage" laws?

Peter said:

Solution.
Reduce the working week hours.
Difficult, but must be addressed.
Advances in technology must not just benefit the rich.
Click to expand...

More market manipulation is not the solution.

mmm....shiney! · Jul 29, 2014

Peter said:

Won't business be pleased dealing with thousands of job applications a week.
May have to employ more just to deal with being snowed under with job applications.
Click to expand...

No, they'll just get thrown in the bin or deleted from the email.

mmm....shiney! · Jul 29, 2014

SilverPete said:

Alternatively, maybe all this concern about the impact of automation is nothing more than modern day Ludditism, and productivity gains from technology along with growing populations will open up vast new opportunities for future employment?

Sympathy for the Luddites
By PAUL KRUGMAN

June 13, 2013
Sympathy for the Luddites
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I stopped reading once I reached this: By PAUL KRUGMAN

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Ten job seekers/vacancy, unemployment 6% and 13.5% for 15-24 year olds

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