RECORD 20.6% Unemployed/Under-Employed in Australia

[fourandsixpants]

....a new record high yes, 20.6% of Australia's Workforce unemployed and underemployed

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/01/roy-morgan-unemployment-at-record-high/

........while employers and the Abbott Government push for easier visas for overseas workers

[cherry*135]

What steps have the current Govt taken to alleviate this problem?

(apart from proposed measures re cuts in benefits, changes in eligibility etc, in the Budget which are unfair and will FAIL to get passed).

[fourandsixpants]

[village_person]

RECORD 20.6% Unemployed/Under-Employed in Australia

What rubbish. We're still riding high on Wayne's promise.

THE Australian economy will create another 500,000 new jobs during the next two years, Treasurer Wayne Swan says.

It's all beer and skittles. 

[fourandsixpants]

rhubarb

[fourandsixpants]

and custard

[fourandsixpants]

with cream on top

[downeyas · Accepted solution]

& don't forget the cherry lol

[fourandsixpants]

The single most important thing a government can do is to ensure its workforce is fully engaged. Yet, this government is happy to use unemployment as a tool to achieve its neo liberal economic policies that, when implemented, are counter-productive to full employment.

Worse still, the government seems to be on a mission to demonise the unemployed. With a compliant media they are happy to depict them as lazy, as dole bludgers, as people who refuse to develop work skills, who lack appropriate qualifications, who are unwilling to travel to find work.

A compliant media (knowingly or unknowingly) are enjoined to use a type of language that demeans an unemployed person, that blames the victim rather than addressing the reasons behind retrenchments. The government’s approach to the unemployed in the May budget underscores their contempt for those who cannot find a job. They blame the individual rather than address systemic failures.

Comments from politicians and their obsequious media stooges such as, ‘there are plenty of jobs out there for those willing to look’, only serve to validate a contempt that masks something far worse: a deliberate plan to maintain a level of unemployment consistent with their plan to stifle wage increases and improve the profits of those their policies are designed to favour.

The proof of this is easy to see.

1) There are approximately 770, 000 persons unemployed and only about 150,000 vacancies advertised.

2) There has been a massive increase of 457 visa’s that bring in overseas workers to fill positions that the unemployed could satisfy.

3) There are currently no direct local job creation programs in play.

4) The combined underutilisation of the workforce is 15% which represents billions of dollars in lost gross domestic product.

The government is doing nothing to address this travesty.

This is a betrayal of our country’s human resources and the media are co-conspirators..............

http://theaimn.com/cost-unemployment/

[fourandsixpants]

Neo-liberalism has also changed the way we think about unemployment. In the past we understood clearly that it arose as a result of a shortage of jobs. In recent decades, we have been conditioned by a relentless (lying) press and government statements to perceive unemployment as an individual problem.

So the unemployed are lazy; have poor work attitudes; refuse to invest in appropriate skills; are subject to disincentives arising from misguided government welfare support, and all the rest of the arguments that mainstream uses to obfuscate the social problem. In Australia, this sort of “blame the victim” approach was accompanied by a new nomenclature that entered our daily public discourse and was promoted by government ministers including successive prime ministers.

We were told that the unemployed were bludgers, job snobs, cruisers and worse. Television current affairs programs targetted unemployed families and lured them into looking as though they didn’t want to work.

All of this despite the overwhelming evidence from studies in most countries that the unemployed were highly motivated to find work and were victims of a shortage of jobs.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=7308