Many people claim that, because Malcolm Turnbull is personally wealthy, he is more qualified to oversee our economy.
But if the ABS figures are anything to go by, Malcolm is taking us backwards at a rate of knots.
Over the past 12 months, trend employment increased by 217,000 – a far cry from the 300,000 jobs that the Coalition used to talk so much about.
The trend employment increase of 3,700 persons between April and May 2016 represents a monthly growth rate of 0.03%, which is significantly below the monthly average over the past 20 years of 0.15%. The rate of growth in employment for the past five months has been below this average.
“The latest Labour Force release shows continued growth in trend part-time employment with decreases in full-time employment,” said General Manager of ABS’ Macroeconomic Statistics Division, Bruce Hockman.
“This is the eleventh consecutive month with part-time employment increases of more than 10,000 persons; and fourth consecutive month with full-time employment decreases of more than 5,000 persons.”
This is reflected in the trend monthly hours worked in all jobs series, which decreased by 2.3 million hours (0.1 per cent) to 1,632.1 million hours. Hours worked have decreased by 13.7 million hours (0.8 per cent) over the last 6 months
By comparison, in September 2013, aggregate monthly hours worked were 1,645.8 million hours even though there were about 270,000 less people employed.
“The trend underutilisation rate, which is a quarterly measure that includes both unemployment and underemployment, remained steady at 14.2 per cent. We have also seen the recent trends of increasing underemployment for males continuing into May.” Mr Hockman said.
The trend underemployment ratio of employed males is currently at a historical high of 7.2 per cent.
More people are working less hours. With stagnant wage growth and calls to cut penalty rates and crack down on welfare, this can only result in even more people being reduced to poverty.
So much for jobs. How about growth?
The Terms of trade decreased 1.9% in seasonally adjusted terms in the March quarter following a decrease of 3.3% in the December quarter. From the March quarter 2015 to the March quarter 2016 the Terms of trade has fallen 11.5%. This reflects a fall in the price of exports relative to the price of imports.
Free trade agreements don’t seem to be working in our favour – go figure.
During the March quarter, trend Real net national disposable income was flat at 0.0%. Through the year Real net national disposable income fell 1.1% compared with an increase of 3.2% for GDP.
Whilst the reported growth in GDP is reasonably good in current circumstances, this has not “trickled down” – our standard of living has in fact gone backwards.
How about capital expenditure?
The trend volume estimate for total new capital expenditure fell by 2.8% in the March quarter 2016 while the seasonally adjusted estimate fell by 5.2%. (down 15.4% for the year)
The trend volume estimate for buildings and structures fell by 3.6% in the March quarter 2016 while the seasonally adjusted estimate fell by 7.9%. (down 18% for the year)
The trend volume estimate for equipment, plant and machinery fell by 1.0% in the March quarter 2016 while the seasonally adjusted estimate fell by 0.5%. (down 10.2% for the year).
It might be an exciting time to be Malcolm Turnbull – for the rest of us, not so much.
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