Unemployment in Australia

A person is classified as employed when he or she has paid   work for more than one hour per week. The exception occurs in the case of family members working without pay in the family business. Full employment occurs when   cyclical unemployment associated with weak expenditure and recession is avoided, and   where a fairly low level of natural unemployment is tolerated. The acceptable target for the unemployment rate is currently around 6-7 %. ( Morris:2000,   P 272 )


Australia did well during the 1980s in creating employment opportunities. Unemployment declined steadily to reach only 6.2% for   1989-90. A severe recession started in mid-1990, causing the unemployment to rise to 11 % in 1992-93. At this time, the level of cyclical unemployment was high.   However, strong economic activity in 1993-1996 cause unemployment to fall   8.5 % for 1995-96 and the unemployment rate continue to rise in the year 1997. Australia’s economic growth was strong between 1997-98 and in the ending June of 1999, unemployment fall down to average of only 7.6 %. During the mid to late 1980s employment increased faster in Australia than in any other OCED country. This record,   however, was not enough to ensure that all people who wanted to work could do so. The unemployment problem makes it very difficult to achieve the objectives of   full employment. Almost 1.6 million new jobs were created between 1983 and 1990,   but the number of unemployed people fell by only 100,000. The unemployment   level is even worse nowadays by referring to the table behind provided by the Australia Bureau Statistic.


Unemployment had become a persistent problem because while the number of jobs has grown, the number of people wanting work has grown even faster. Technological and structural change, fewer workers are needed in the traditional employment areas of primary and secondary industry, and in the routine clerical areas of service sector.   The most striking technological development has been...