Final week’s sturdy jobs figures for September — unemployment revised right down to 4.1%, document participation and document hours labored — had champagne corks popping amongst inflation hawks who assumed they killed off any likelihood of an rate of interest minimize this 12 months. However additionally they imply Australia’s productiveness efficiency is about to say no nonetheless additional.
That’s as a result of what economists name “productiveness” isn’t something a lot to do with what you and I consider once we use the phrase. As an alternative it means gross home product per hour labored — or, ideally, gross worth added available in the market sector of the economic system per hour labored. That signifies that if hours labored go up and GDP doesn’t go up as properly, then productiveness declines. And GDP may not go up for all types of causes unrelated to productiveness — there is likely to be a decline in our phrases of commerce, or authorities spending may fall, or households may in the reduction of on spending, or companies may in the reduction of in investing.
It will translate into a relatively decrease enhance in GDP and bingo — headlines a few “productiveness disaster” within the Monetary Overview and calls for from enterprise for industrial relations legal guidelines to be “fastened” to allow them to exploit employees extra successfully be extra versatile.
And the largest factor stopping GDP from rising in the meanwhile is the Reserve Financial institution’s punitive financial coverage stance and the stress it’s placing on households and small enterprise. That’s been a key motive for our poor productiveness efficiency for the reason that pandemic ended and can seemingly be the largest motive why productiveness within the present quarter is poor — no matter how laborious or how sensible all of us labored.
It’s simply one of many areas the place the alleged “productiveness debate” is marked by unhealthy religion and wilful misinterpretation by folks hostile to employees and extraordinary households in enterprise, politics, economics and the media. We mentioned one other lately: the effectivity of our well being system, which has been derided as a productiveness black gap, besides that it seems that it’s one of many world’s best, and one of many world’s finest when it comes to well being outcomes.
The federal opposition joined within the assaults on the well being and caring sector final week, when Invisible Man Angus Taylor — cheered on by the Monetary Overview — emerged from hiding to assault the truth that “the vast majority of jobs progress is coming from the non-market sector, in the meantime, market sectors are experiencing talent shortages … this has resulted in productiveness throughout the economic system going backwards by 0.2% annually. There was no productiveness progress within the care economic system for 20 years however on the similar time, it’s driving a reallocation of employees from different sectors.”
Frontbench colleague Michaelia “Chuckles” Money joined in to attempt to undermine the energy of the labour market by arguing the expansion within the well being and caring sector was “simply the federal government rising the scale of the paperwork. The Albanese authorities is all about rising the scale of the general public sector” This evaluation was even dumber than most of Money’s contributions to public debate. The well being and caring sector has added over 220,000 jobs for the reason that Coalition was dumped from workplace — in comparison with 70,000 bureaucrat jobs, at federal, state and native authorities stage. Or is it that Money can’t inform the distinction between a nurse, or an aged care employee, or a police officer, and a pencil-pusher?
But when Taylor and Money have an issue with the care economic system, and suppose rising employment in well being, incapacity care, aged care and childcare is such a drain on the economic system, the answer is fairly easy: inform us what number of docs, nurses, incapacity care suppliers, aged care employees and childcare employees you’ll minimize once you’re elected. They’ll management the purse strings of most of these areas in the event that they’re again in cost, in order that they’ll be ready to finish the nice productiveness drain that’s the well being and caring economic system.
True, this is able to run lifeless in opposition to what the Coalition did when it was final in workplace — well being and social care employment grew by practically 900,000 over the three phrases of the Coalition from 2013, because it ramped up spending on well being, and on the NDIS (dramatically so) and on residence take care of seniors, and in childcare. However Taylor and Money appear satisfied that each one of that was a nasty thought — or, at the least, it’s a nasty thought when Labor does precisely the identical factor.
So, let’s have it from the Coalition, and their cheerleaders on the AFR: what number of well being and care employees ought to be minimize? How for much longer ought to sufferers watch for surgical procedure? How a lot worse ought to the situations be for our seniors in residential aged care? Simply what number of toddlers can one childcare employee take care of without delay? How a lot ought to we pare again companies to disabled Australians? We’re all ears.
