JobSeeker numbers for October raise some issues that go back to misinterpretations following the initial posting on this series from DSS in March: JobSeekers aint “job seekers”

As support through this facility is pulled back and conditions returned it becomes opaque to what extent it represents changes in the labour market. Jobseeker numbers are falling and Cairns fell by about 6% from the previous month. As in previous posts I don’t think this is a good way to look at it and have preferred with SA2 data at changes relative to pre-covid SALM labour force as the best available benchmark I can find. Change in JobSeekers as a proportion of labour force since March:

I don’t know what happened in Yarrabah where JobSeekers were slashed within a month to way below even March levels. Communities are always difficult statistically and can’t be directly compared. Google search throws up this:

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert last week said that an estimates hearing was told that since the Federal Government’s mutual obligations were ratcheted up in September, job agencies had suspended the payments of 12,137 First National peoples, 12,135 culturally and linguistically diverse people, 13,169 people living with disability and 6,334 single parents.

Have no idea absent another explanation and can’t find the Yarrabah data replicated in other communities so far. Always reluctant to post on this lest some troglodyte emerge from beneath their rock.

What it perhaps should focus attention on is not the labour market but that the JobSeeker boost disproportionately advantaged Cairns relative to other regions with fiscal stimulus.

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