Jodie Belyea (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. What do today's jobs numbers tell us about the state of the economy? Why is the Albanese Labor government's economic plan so important, and what economic policies have been rejected?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The wonderful member for Dunkley cares about jobs and the cost of living, even if those opposite don't. Even in a very soft economy we are still creating tens of thousands of new jobs, and it's a tribute to our workers and to our employers that so many new jobs were created last month, despite all of the economic challenges coming at us. There were 58,200 new jobs created in July and all of them were full time. Almost a million jobs have been created on our watch, and that is a record.

No government or Prime Minister has ever overseen more job creation in a single parliamentary term than this Prime Minister and his government. As he said a moment ago, we need to put these numbers in context. We acknowledge that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 per cent in July, and we know that it was about 3½ in the middle of last year. We know job ads have weakened in 11 of the last 12 months as well. We anticipated this in our budget forecast, which expects our economy to slow because of higher interest rates and global economic uncertainty.

The reason that we have a rising unemployment rate and are still creating new jobs is that participation is at a new record high as well. All of this means that more Australians are working, more Australians are earning more and more Australians are keeping more of what they earn. There are also numbers today which show that average full-time workers are earning $159 more a week since we came to office. The same taxpayer is paying $43 a week less tax. The gender pay gap is now the narrowest it has been at any stage. This is welcome and deliberate, not accidental.

Our objective is to get on top of inflation without smashing jobs or the economy. Today shows we are making progress. There are almost one million jobs, inflation has come off substantially, wages growth has almost doubled, the gender pay gap is at a record low and there are tax cuts for every taxpayer. We have still turned two big Liberal deficits into two big Labor surpluses. These are the dividends of our responsible economic management. This is the major dividing line between those opposite and our side of the House. They desperately want higher unemployment, higher inflation, higher interest rates, lower wages and less help for people who are doing it tough in our community. We are getting on with the job of getting on top of inflation without smashing jobs and without smashing the economy. Because of our efforts and on our watch more people are working and more people are earning more and keeping more of what they are. We see that in today's new numbers despite the much slower growth and the international uncertainty that we are seeing in our economy.