By Frank Enright
"'All these years we've given our kids everything they've wanted. All of a sudden we felt like an insect that was going to get walked on — he hit the bottle. We fought, the kids got upset, I walked out with a black eye.' — Female, Melbourne."
The quote is by the committee on employment opportunities in the government's discussion paper Restoring full employment. The story reflects the growing social costs imposed by continuing high levels of unemployment.
The document, released by Paul Keating on December 15, concedes up front that having a job is a right. It's a right that is being denied, in reality, to well over 1 million Australians. Over the next 240 pages the committee ponders how full employment can be achieved — without success.
Anyone familiar with the British TV series Yes, Minister knows Sir Humphrey's policy on committees: pick the members only when you've decided the report's recommendations. Keating is obviously a Sir Humphrey fan.
With all the sophistication of a primary school discussion on the theory of relativity, the committee's deliberations lead them to the conclusion: "Unemployment is a problem for all ... [it] justifies a contribution from all of us ... [which is] as much as anything, attitudinal and a matter of will".
That the commissioning of the report was a waste of taxpayers' money is beyond doubt. But, if the media are to be believed, perhaps unemployment is all behind us now anyway. The impression created by newspaper headlines such as "22,000 new jobs help fuel recovery", "Growing recovery creates jobs" and "More jobs, fewer jobless", is that the jobs recovery is already in full swing.
Economists and media commentators last year spoke of a "jobless recovery" in which profits were booming and inflation was low, but there was no major reduction in the number of unemployed. This, we are now being told, has changed.
Corrupting unemployment statistics has become a political imperative for most of the world's governments. In Britain, the Tory government has elevated this practice into an art form; the basis of calculating the number of jobless has changed 30 times in 10 years, each time "reducing" those without work. In Australia too, temporary training schemes and changes in eligibility shift regularly. Few doubt that government statistics considerably underestimate the number out of work.
Even within this scenario, the reporting of the latest job figures by the media was one-sided; the emphasis was on job growth, with little, if any, space given to describing the nature of these jobs.
The real story is that full-time employment actually fell by 26,800. It was in part-time work that employment grew — up 48,700, leaving a statistical increase in "jobs" of 22,000. Part-time work now accounts for one quarter of all jobs, and this figure is increasing.
According to the government's own figures, unemployment in trend terms is still at its highest level since September 1990. Youth unemployment is a staggering 31.8%.
The dramatic decline in the manufacturing industry continues. The announcement by Ford that it may close its Australian operations by the year 2000, with the loss of a further 7000 full-time jobs, is only the most recent example of jobs being destroyed. These jobs won't return when demand picks up; they're gone for good.
Job growth is in the service industries at reduced hours and reduced pay. This trend is gradually lowering the living standards of the Australian work force.
Greg Lenthen, writing in the January 29 Sydney Morning Herald, points out that in order to appreciate the magnitude of the unemployment problem you need to combine the number of people out of work with the average duration of their joblessness. This gives a third figure, "labour lost". In December 1993, the average length of time spent unemployed was 57.6 weeks, up from the 1991 figure of 42.4 weeks.
Lost labour time, he recalls, used to lead news bulletins in the form of days lost to "industrial disputes". Using Lenthen's method, lost labour time through unemployment has to be measured in years: "Currently, over a million years!".
"Talking in terms of time lost rather than numbers out of work or percentages unemployed helps dispel any illusion that the unemployment problem has stabilised or even been in some way alleviated", concludes Lenthen.
Another indication of the amount of lost labour is the participation rate. This measures those able to be in the work force against those actually working; the lower the rate, the greater is the number of "hidden unemployed". Today it is 63.1%, only marginally higher than two years ago.
"Creating enough jobs is crucially linked to high and sustained economic growth", asserts the prime ministerial committee. This is neither something that the present economic system can produce, nor something that the environment can sustain with current production methods.
"Structural adjustment and technological progress are essential to underpin our competitive position for future increases in living standards", continues the committee. "... increases in productivity may restrain employment growth in the short term ... for example, productivity increases in a number of industries have led to labour shedding." This will continue: for business the logic of introducing new technology is to allow a company to produce more with less labour.
Increases in productivity spur the increasing trend to part-time work for increasing numbers of workers. The question is, who is to benefit from the introduction of labour saving technology: the community through the maintenance of living standards and more leisure time, or a small minority through increased profits?
That the last major reduction in working hours occurred half a century ago is incredible when the mind-boggling level of technological innovation and application since then is considered.
The consequences of failing to restore full employment are recognised in the government's discussion paper: an accelerated social breakdown. But the committee refuses even to consider the only effective way to reduce unemployment and poverty — a significant reduction in working hours, with the sharing of both the participation and the benefits of production among the community as a whole — and without lowering the quality of life.
The committee's prescriptions are based on best case economic predictions and increased government handouts to business. Even then, it predicts an unemployment rate of at least 5% at the turn of the century. This approach is too little, too late.