The Guardian’s Greg Jericho has put together some great charts showing how the private sector job market has collapsed, while government-aligned jobs are booming.
As illustrated in the next chart, jobs in the market sector recorded near zero growth in the year to March 2024, while jobs in healthcare & social services, education, and public administration increased by more than 300,000:
The situation is worse when hours worked are examined. As illustrated in the next chart, hours in the market sector fell by 26.8 million hours in the year to March 2024, whereas hours worked grew solidly in the government-aligned sectors of healthcare & social services, education and public administration:
Greg Jericho also produced the following chart showing that only 39% of employers recruited new staff – down from 47% at the end of last year:
Moreover, only 18% of employers expect to increase their staff in the next three months – down from 20% in December last year and 21% a year ago:
Separate data compiled by Alex Joiner at IFM Investors showed that small businesses, in particular, have cut back hard on recruitment:
Government-aligned jobs have historically exhibited far slower productivity growth than market sector jobs:
Therefore, the NDIS-driven boom in government-aligned employment portends poorly for Australia’s future productivity growth.
Australia is now an NDIS-supported economy.
