Continued Rise in Long-term Unemployment Despite Improving Economy

Even in the face of economic recovery the unemployment rate is not improving. What is causing this problem, and when will the job market improve?

Although we are beginning to see an economic recovery, with an increase in labour there is still an increase in the unemployment rate. This has been going on for about 18 months. Many people are out of jobs nowadays even with the economy beginning to increase in certain areas.

According to Centrelink, the payments that have been made by the Herald have shown that there are benefits available to anyone who has been unemployed for at least 12 months.

This rate has increased by 27% in April of 2010 as compared to April of 2009. The average number of people unemployed was around 72,000 people which made it 334,244 long-term and 60% of that was men.

Short-term, the amount of people who have been unemployed has gone down by about 20,000 in the year 2010. This was researched by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. One way people who have been put recently out of work have been able to smooth out their personal lifestyle cash requirements has been through credit cards usage.

Even though the stimulus package that was approved for Australia helped in many ways, there are still many problems to solve.

One of the senior analysts at the University of Sydney’s Workplace research Centre, Mike Rafferty, has the belief that first beneficiaries of our increasing economy have been the workers who are shifting positions or who are increasing hours and not necessarily the unemployed.

Labour Markets

Mr. Rafferty has said that the people who are benefiting first off are people who already have a job and have the ability to move to a better position from say part-time to a full-time position. This isn’t always the case with those who are work for a labour market.

There are many labour analysts that agree with the fact of the longer any worker who is unemployed in the labour market is out of work, the more difficult it is to get back into it no matter how good there is an economic recovery.

Another area that Centrelink found an issue with was the average number of allowance packages that are being paid for youth. While this number too has decreased over time, the average amount of younger people who are claiming benefits is holding steady at 12% higher as opposed to what it was about a year ago.

According to the Bureau of Statistics the official unemployment rate has decreased from a whopping 6.1% in the June of 2009 to a low 5.3% in April. The loss of jobs is making the unemployment rate increase to around 8.5%.