Tim Colebatch, Inside Story (22.1.15) writes that Australia’s job market has failed badly since the global financial crisis. ‘In a little over three years from early 2005 to May 2008, Australia’s working age population, as officially defined, grew by just under a million people. The number of us with jobs grew by a phenomenal 940,000.
‘Half a decade later, in the three years to December 2014, Australia’s working age population grew by just over a million people. Yet this time the number of jobs grew by only 385,000. For every one hundred extra adults, in other words, we generated just thirty-eight new jobs. Compared to the ninety-four new jobs created for every one hundred extra adults just before the global financial crisis, that’s some shift.’