Yesterday I did the week’s shopping and what a joy it was. My local supermarket was full of beaming kids. Not patrons. Workers!
Nobody knew where anything was and the checkout moved at a snail’s pace. I had to pack my own bags to take pressure off the checkout boy.
All of this for one reason. The kids had just commenced new jobs and hadn’t yet mastered their tasks. My checkout boy’s career had been underway for a full two hours.
What a brilliant outcome!
For years, migrant workers have dominated the entry-level positions at supermarkets. I have precisely nothing against these individuals. It was all the fault of the economic model that misused and abused them.
Thanks to an unfettered migration economic model that swamped the nation with cheap foreign labour, local youth workers have been stuck in a jobs depression for a generation:
Why did it suddenly change in 2020? COVID.
That’s right. The Wuhan Institute of Virology proved to be a much better economic manager than Treasurers Scott Morrison or Josh Frydenberg as it finally forced the borders shut and the tide of indentured foreign slaves backward.
An ongoing moderate immigration program oriented towards refugees and high skills is in the national interest. But the immigration system should always be a complement to the economy, not its driver. This is precisely because too much of a good thing destroys the prospects for youth employment and wage rises. Now, thanks entirely to COVID, we have a labour market that has no choice but to employ local kids in entry-level positions again.
So, when “Psycho” Morrison pledges stuff like he did yesterday, take it with a grain of salt:
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will ramp up his economic attack on Anthony Albanese with a promise of 1.3 million jobs over the next five years, seizing on the Opposition Leader’s embarrassing campaign stumble where he could not remember Australia’s unemployment rate and official interest rate.
What Morrison is actually pledging to do is radically boost the immigration intake, by 200k before July at last count, to provide 1m jobs for migrants over the next five years. This will push existing youth back onto the dole queue where the psychopathic PM can then kick them for being lazy.
Labor also plans to keep immigration numbers high, but to offer far fewer temporary work visas of the type that are so exploited. More permanent migrant positions will take some of the pressure off youth labour markets and wages.
