Where do all the people go?

Who believes those statistics? People who gave up looking after many months and years of trying are also not counted as unemployed. It's always skewed to make the economy look much better than it really is.

Thanks for your article Karen… your reminder to remember the people behind the numbers is important… and I think it prudent to also share some further facts about the methods the Australian Government, via the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) use to skew, soften or to otherwise simplistically under represent the seriousness and extent of the current unemployment situation in Australia. As with much of modern life today, spin doctor skills deployed under the guise of ‘marketing and communications’ are bringing to life the scenes of deception and avoidance of the truth we enjoyed as clever comedy on our television screens via programs such as ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Spin City’. I do concede that some of these ‘adjustments’ appear to be a genuine attempt to segregate, measure and present data from what is a complex and socially sensitive area, nonetheless I also believe there must be a better way to present the true situation to the Australian general public, at the very least more accurately than a simplistic and extremely misleading Unemployment % Rate. To ensure a complete understanding I encourage all to take 10 minutes and read the ABS on-line page here: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/productsFBE517ECA9B07F63CA257D0E001AC7D4?OpenDocument Some Interesting Facts from the above site: 1 - To be classified as unemployed a person needs to: ? not work more than one hour in the… week and… ? be actively looking for work in [for the] previous four weeks; and ? be available to start in th[at]… week. 2 - Therefore the ABS counts everyone who works for at least one hour in the… week as employed. “While a one hour cut-off point could be argued to be insufficient to sustain a family or person financially...” [Hold-on, did I read that correctly…? “could be argued”…. who spun that garbage…!?] 3 - Only those who are taking active steps to find a job, or have done so in the past four weeks, are counted as unemployed. [So those who bludge off the dole are not counted…!?] 4 - Some people might want to work but have given up actively looking because they believe they will not find a job. These people are called discouraged jobseekers and are not considered to be unemployed. [To me this is the most astounding exclusion of all…] 5 - ABS measures unemployment by collecting data from a monthly survey of about 26,000 dwellings as well as a selection of hotels, hospitals, boarding schools, colleges, prisons and indigenous communities throughout Australia. Overall, data are collected from about 52,000 people… [Does this really produce a representative sample for such a diverse and dispersed nation of almost 24 million people…? …and is this really the best and most reliable way to source such socially decision critical information…?] As noted above, please see the website for the full account of the so called… “Supplementary Measures of Joblessness and labor underutilization” they include: ? Underemployment rate: number of people underemployed expressed as a proportion of the labour force; ? Labour force under-utilisation rate: the unemployed, plus the underemployed, expressed as a percentage of the labour force; ? Long-term unemployment rate: number of persons unemployed for more than 12 months as a percentage of the labour force; ? Volume measures of labour under-utilisation: labour hrs sought by unemployed & underemployed, as % of total labour force potential hours ? Extended labour force underutilisation rate: unemployed, plus underemployed, plus two groups of persons marginally attached to the labour force, expressed as a proportion of the labour force augmented by the two groups of marginally attached persons.

Great article

Apologies - it looks like my response posted twice for some reason (I tried to edit it down for length)

Ian Jones you have you been reading my mind! I'm in exactly that situation. We're living off our savings trying to find jobs in any field (I'm a highly specialised Well Engineer and looking at driving trucks to weather the storm - (although I am a Petrolhead and love trucks mind you), another friend my ex boss works in an outdoor shop). What was the point of years of specialisation and spending a fortune training ourselves (because companies stopped spending money a long time ago). We're waiting until we get out Citizenship in September then we're going to decide from there. Until then we're spending everything we saved in 4 years of being in Australia (not much since government took in tax most of it and then gave nothing back when we fell on hard times). We are then considering options like move abroad, selling up our Australian assets (at a 30% loss in currency to when we brought it in and a loss of stamp duty). If we do this though its likely the next time we will move back to Australia will be to retire only (My dream is to retire to Albany, WA). One issue is the lack of depth to Australia when it comes to Engineering we have become a giant quarry - WA Especially. Here in WA as a Chartered Mechanical Engineer there is little work as what we have is largely built on Mining and Oil / Gas. Add to that another difficulty here (and with modern times generally) is that people only hire people with 110% of what they want - there is little "Hire for Attitude train for Ability" . (Management books teach us - "Willing & Able" its easy to train someone who is Willing but not able, harder to get good performance from someone who is not willing). PLUS certifications and education have become a commodity and the tail that wags the dog - every different job now requires a VET/AQF qualification e.g. if you want to do job A, they require a Certificate IV in "A", so you do that cert IV but now the job's gone and Job B requires a Cert IV in "B" which will be gone by the time you get the cert. Then You get the certs, but you don't have the experience - sorry. OR You have the experience but you don't have the certs - sorry. Except its not sorry since virtually no employers will write back and even acknowledge they've accepted your CV for consideration and fewer still will email and say sorry you're not what they wanted. In essence Australia is quite difficult a place to reinvent yourself in your mid 40s. UK used to be just as bad, with the USA being the best at new beginnings. UK is now much improved at this, Some sectors here may be better than others and things are improving but its definitely hard to see employers looking in terms of transferable skills. Quite often they simply bring in someone from outside. I've been thinking a lot about this situation and have seen lots of Engineers trying to retrain as teachers (another big catch 22 situation between skills and experience and numbers of places), or just living off their savings. Many have left and gone abroad and won't be coming back. Many are trying to set themselves up in alternative industries and move away from the oilfield - downshifting and enjoying more time with the kids and working closer to home, many of those won't be leaving unless rock star salaries come back. For us In the meantime we are doing a couple of startups - including "industrial pictures" a small business where I'm hoping to build on my passion for Industrial & Architectural Photography. I think the longer this thing goes on the bigger the skills crisis is going to be and the higher the rates of pay are going to get to entice people back. It takes 10 years to train a competent engineer.. Ironically while this is driving pay down in the short term it will makes things even more unsustainable in the long term. While some of the experienced ones may be tempted back in future, they will have lost a lot of currency and find it hard going to get back - especially as happened last time in 1999 they were written off and the next gen behind them developed at their expense. But it will be far harder to restart the talent pipeline again as many of the new , young guys will have found other jobs and will not come back for love or money. All in all things are a dogs breakfast right now! Globally PR & Marketing agency If I get a good job in another industry, with stability and acceptable pay, living closer to home I start to wonder If I would go back.