By Steve Thompson
According to associate professor Mark Wooden, an expert on employment matters, "If you add the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate we would have a total unemployment rate of about 21%".
His remarks were included in a January 24 Sydney Sun-Herald feature on underemployment — the situation in which people have jobs, but for fewer hours than they want, or in occupations well below their qualifications. The government considers people employed if they work for more than 1 hour a week.
Currently, the official jobless rate is 11.3%, and treasurer John Dawkins now concedes it won't fall to 10% by August, as he predicted at the time of the budget. In fact, the figure may well climb to 12%. When the underemployed are added to the nearly 1 million officially without work, the real number of people thrown on the scrap heap probably exceeds 2 million.
The Committee for the Economic Development of Australia has predicted that GDP for 1993 will expand by 4%, but unemployment will remain around its present level. This is the other side of the productivity increases demanded by both Labor and Liberal economic "rationalists": more is produced by fewer people.
Underemployment has doubled since the late '80s. Steven Kates, the chief economist at the Australian Chamber of Commerce, was quoted in the Sun-Herald as saying, "The number of hours being offered is down and people who were once fully employed are now only part-time employed — the unemployment figures simply do not reflect these people".
In 1986 18% of those employed worked less than a full week; now it's 24% and rising. Kates warns of the long-term consequences: "When the economy picks up in 4 or 5 years, businesses won't be able to fill new jobs because apprentices didn't get trained or people's skills didn't get developed".
Unemployment and underemployment lead to: long-term poverty; homelessness, especially for young people; violence in the family; physical and mental health problems; an increase in crime.
But in the Western Australian election campaign, the two major parties, both proponents of free market politics, are competing with each other for the most draconian law and order commitments.
Premier Carmen Lawrence bemoans a "breakdown of values" in the community and plans to lock up young people for longer and increase the size of the police force. Underemployment or massive youth unemployment are not recognised as major contributing factors by either party.
Of course, employment doesn't necessarily mean escaping poverty. A family of two adults and two children, for example, need around $370 per week to be on the poverty line. Families which have a male parent out of work are struggling to keep above the poverty line because women's wages are on average lower than male wages, and around half of women in the work force are working part time.
Meanwhile, some people do very handsomely from the free market. Kerry Packer's Consolidated Press Holdings recorded a net profit of $467 million for 1992. Out of that, Packer paid himself $1 million a week.