Many people think of unemployment pretty much as mainstream economists and the government would have us think about it – that it is a statistical number of people looking for work according to a rather arbitrary definition set by the government. It is much more
The following is an excerpt of Per Capita’s research report “Coming of Age in a Crisis: Young Workers, Covid-19 and the Youth Guarantee”, which was published on 18 June 2020. Australian labour force data for May shows that, for the first time since the Great
It’s a sign of the times. Government purses around the world have flung open with reckless abandon and the cash is flowing. Stimulus, baby! A radical economic idea (as far as a thing can be radical in unradical times) has been getting around of late,
If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it is that unemployment is a problem. It is expensive. It steals the health and income of its victims. It narrows their opportunities. It subjects them to a host of dehumanising demands. It seems unimaginable that any country would purposefully force a part of its population into unemployment. But the truth is, all countries do. Including our own. The concept of a ‘non-accelerating inflationary rate of unemployment’ (NAIRU) gains little exposure beyond economics classrooms. The Reserve Bank and Treasury rarely mention it openly. Politicians never do. Yet, for 40 years, the NAIRU has been at the centre of economic policy