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Prime Minister Scott Morrison says no decision on the future of JobKeeper or JobSeeker has yet been made as Australia’s unemployment rate reaches a 19-year high.
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Scott Morrison deliberates over JobKeeper as jobless rate hits 7.1%
18 June 2020
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7 minute read
The unemployment rate has now risen to 7.1 per cent, up from 5.2 per cent in March at the start of the COVID-19 crisis, according to new statistics by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
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In May, 227,700 Australians lost their jobs, with 927,600 people now officially classified as unemployed.
“The ABS estimates that a combined group of around 2.3 million people — around one in five employed people — were affected by either job loss between April and May or had less hours than usual for economic reasons in May,” said Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at the ABS.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government would now factor these latest unemployment figures into its review of the JobKeeper payment.
The Treasury is currently undertaking the review, with changes set to be announced at the government’s economic update on 23 July.
“Supports will be important. What we have been careful to do is to work through and get this right and get the balance right,” Mr Morrison said.
“We put these arrangements in place for six months to give us this time. We put our supports in place, income supports, JobKeeper and JobSeeker, and we put that in for six months so we would have that time to properly move for the next step, to change gears again.”
Mr Morrison said his government would not be rushed into making a decision on the future of its stimulus measures, despite speculation that it would wind back JobKeeper for certain industries ahead of its 27 September end date.
“I have dealt with some of the hardest policy problems you could... many of them you would not want to have dealt with, in many different portfolios — in social services and in immigration and in Treasury, and I can tell you, we have never had to deal with a more complex policy problem than this,” he said.
“That is why I am not going to be rushed on it. I’m going to be careful about it. I am going to take the advice.
“I am going to grill the data. I am going to listen to people, and we’re going to weigh these decisions very, very carefully.”
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