Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Siewert. You refer to some commentary that was made by an academic, Professor Borland. In terms of the professor's comments, I will make a couple of remarks before I respond to the final part of your question. Unquestionably, over recent months the labour market has seen unprecedented inflows and outflows as the economy has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Clearly, any findings around recent experiences in the labour market cannot be analogous to or transferrable to normal economic conditions.

The other thing I would note about the data and the investigation undertaken by Professor Borland, which he referred to in the evidence he gave, is that the investigation almost entirely centred on ABS labour force data. It didn't go to administrative data on payment recipients, as an example. And, as you would well know, Senator Siewert, people on payment are not necessarily counted as unemployed. If they are exempt from mutual obligations or not looking for work, they could be counted as not being in the labour force. We understand that, currently, more than 20 per cent of JobSeeker payment recipients are reporting earnings, meaning that they have some employment and, accordingly, wouldn't be counted as being unemployed. I put that on the record so that we can get some context around the information that Professor Borland was seeking to present as the basis on which he was making his claims.

In relation to your overarching question on disincentives to work, we were receiving significant information from a number of different places in relation to the impact that higher levels of payments were having on, I suppose, the incentive for people to seek work. And don't get me wrong, Senator Siewert: I understand that, particularly at the height of the pandemic, it was a very traumatic time for people, and I'm sure a lot of people were particularly scared. I acknowledge that. However, as we were coming out of the pandemic, we started to see increasing numbers of businesses coming forward—either themselves or through employer organisations like the Australian Business Council, the Ai Group or ACCI. They were putting on the table data collated from surveys of employer organisations saying that employers were having difficulty finding people to fill jobs they were advertising. The National Skills Commission, for which Senator Cash has responsibility, does a monthly survey. In a survey of 2,000 businesses, 40 per cent reported that they were looking for employees, and the single most significant reason they were unable to get employees was that there were no applications for the jobs. In addition to that, the independent JobKeeper review found that, in effect, the elevated levels of payment were acting almost as a base floor in the labour market.

So there were a number of factors that contributed to that information. The other statistic that goes to this point is that we saw quite a significant uptick in people applying for jobs as the jobs market was opening. Clearly, we had to have the jobs available, and I think there was a 13.9 per cent increase in the number of job ads in November. We are starting to see people come back into the market.