Until the 1970's no government would permit the unemployment rate to exceed 2%. This statement is usually met with disbelief but it's true.
The unemployment rate announced today has unexpectedly dropped from 7.5% to 6.8%. This seems like good news but a closer look shows that the drop is likely due to an increase in gig employment, which is basically a form of self employment, insecure, poorly paid and open to sham contracting and abuse. There was a time when a government would do everything it could to stop the unemployment rate from going above 2%. LIFE are one group which is calling for an end to mutual obligations, which is the requirement to undertake an activity, usually look for work, when in receipt of a Centrelink payment. Coinciding with the drop in payment rates at the end of September 2020 is the return of greater mutual obligation activities.
Often the problem isn't that there isn't enough of something, it's that access to it is governed by the market rather than planning for need says Janet Burstall of "Living Incomes For Everyone". She was talking about housing but it applies to jobs too. There is lots of work to be done. The shortage is in paid jobs. 
This episode from our archives, a speaker at a 2015 Politics in the Pub event "Your Rights 2 Work". Dr Victor Quirk from the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) once worked for the Commonwealth Employment Service and for the privatised version, the Job Network. He is now an academic at CofFEE at the University of Newcastle. His history of employment policies in Australia is fascinating and raises the question - why don't we have a lower unemployment rate?
"Unemployment is not a mere blemish in a private enterprise economy. On the contrary, it is part of the essential mechanism of the system and has a definite function to fulfil. The first function of unemployment (which has always existed in open or disguised form) is that it maintains the authority of master over man. The master has normally been in a position to say: 'If you do not want the job, there are plenty of others who do." When a man can say, "If you do not want to employ me, there are plenty of others who will,' the situation is dramatically altered." Walter Korpi 2002
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This episode was broadcast on Radio Blue Mountains 89.1FM on 18th September 2020.
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