The one Christmas present Kevin Rudd doesn’t need

AFR says:

03:49pm | 10/12/09

Meh, its only a matter of time before the Mad Monk has another Bernie Banton moment.  All new leaders get a honeymoon period, but Abbott has about as much chance of leading the coalition to an election victory, as I have of shagging Miranda Kerr.

thatmosis says:

04:06pm | 10/12/09

I couldnt help but smile when the pundits predicted that we had been saved from the worst of the “crash”. Have we. Lets just have a quick look at the figures, in debt to the tune of $115b, house prices on the rise as are interest rates which have already added about $140 per month to the $300,000 loan and from all reports will keep rising. Cards being maxed over the Xmas period, unemployment rates on the up although there was a slight fall thats probably due to seasonal effects, power and food prices on the rise in a country that already is one of the most expensive places to buy food. I seem to rememer that these were some of the problems that triggered the last crash but we are blightly heading down the same path but this time there will be no money for a bail out. We are not out of the woods yet people but hey there’s too much apathy in this country but I dont care

The Judge says:

04:11pm | 10/12/09

well thank goodness Kev hasn’t actually enacted any significant policies yet eh!

Margaret Gray says:

04:15pm | 10/12/09

“...an extra 30,800 full-time jobs were created last month…”

Dear Julia and Wayne,

I wonder if you could provide some clarity on your recent announcement:

What jobs were they? 

In what industries were these jobs ‘created’?

Where - geographically - are these jobs?

Were these jobs ‘created’ as part of the ongoing expansion of the Australian Public Service?

Are they short-term contracted “full time jobs” builiding unnecessary infrastructure under your various National-Building Stimulii and in appeasement to your union comrades?

Are they “Green Jobs”? (LOL)

Any assistance you could provide in debunking the current jobs ‘creation’ myth would be most welcome.

Razor says:

04:19pm | 10/12/09

This is another piece of evidence that the Stimulus spending needs to be reigned in significantly and now.  Either that or say hello to more interest rate rises.

Pete says:

04:59pm | 10/12/09

Obviously your looks match your intellect…

Bob says:

05:00pm | 10/12/09

From The Australian - Unauthorised boat arrivals in Australia have hit 2500 people in the last year alone with confirmation of another interception last night near Christmas Island.  52 and counting…..MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR RUDD.

Andrew Goff says:

05:36pm | 10/12/09

AFR: Real opposition is essential to Democracy. Gloating does not suit you.
thatmosis: Don’t confuse anecdotal issues with underlying causes.
Thejudge: The Senate blocked them? What about the GFC largesse?
Margaret: You’re nuts. The figures are publicly available: retail and banking.
Razor: Rates need to go up from their emergency (lowest in 40 years) levels.
Pete: Your wit matches their intellect.
Bob: Are you saying that is too little or too many?

What a dire set you make (though in fairness the prize must go to Margaret for her wacky conspiricy theorist rantings… at least you could actually check the ABS figures for where the jobs were created before you start being all uppity about them).

Con says:

06:17pm | 10/12/09

Well labor has done us in again, when will will learn labor and pm rudd are all cut from the same incompetent cloth. Rudd is 6 months too late in fixing all our problems, thanks for the high interest rates mate…........

Margaret Gray says:

07:01pm | 10/12/09

@Andrew Goff

The ABS report reveals NOTHING in answer to my above questions around the mythical 30,800 full time jobs allegedly created in November.

Conveniently, neither have you.

Although your urgency to point out the deficiencies in others has left us with little doubt as to your ability to discuss things as an adult.

Before you lift your foot to your mouth again, do us poor conspiracy theorists a favour and run down through answers for us will you dear?

Steve of Cornubia says:

07:21pm | 10/12/09

Imagine Australia was a family going into the recession, a household with a pretty strong financial position - low debt and a fair bit of cash in the bank, thanks to a deceased parent who had been pretty careful with their own finances and so left them with a hefty amount of money.

As the recession started to bite, one of the two was forced onto reduced hours but, thanks to the money in the bank and no debt, they weren’t too worried.

Then things got worse when the other parent had their hours reduced, too. No worries, keep spending the savings, and they could always tap into the credit that was easy to come by, thanks to their dead parent.

Desperate to shore up their high standard of living in the face of deepening recession, our hapless pair spend all the savings AND get into deeper and deeper debt, rather than simply tighten their belts.

Their neighbours wonder at the pair’s ability to ride out the recession, while most others in the street are struggling. Of course, our heroes don’t let on that their frugal, hard working parents are largely responsible for their apparent fiscal fortitude, instead pontificating and bragging about their exemplary financial skills. Who’s to know?

Sound familiar, Mr Rudd?

Rohan says:

07:22pm | 10/12/09

AFR, well Abbott managed to get Sarah Murdoch to launch his book ‘Battlelines’ so you never know. lol.

stevee says:

07:23pm | 10/12/09

What I find interesting is the mining rep. on ABC radio saying that early 2010 and over the following five years there are going to be 50,000 mining vacancies available.
He also stated that Qld & WA will be at war with each other to secure workers to fill the vacancies.

Fed UP says:

07:27pm | 10/12/09

Bob says
Very economical with the truth these Coalition black hearts.
In one two year period alone, Howard had a huge jump to 6000 illegals entering the country legally.
It continued to rise. But I guess we don’t mind them because generally they are white and can’t be demonised to extract votes.

Kurisu says:

07:36pm | 10/12/09

Interesting with Victorias employment rate given Brumby announced the cancellation of coal exports of brown coal. I’ll wait and see what the rate is next year.

If the ALP is trying to turn Gippsland into the unemployment capital of Aust, keep attacking the power & coal industries.

Public Record says:

08:03pm | 10/12/09

ABS Labour Force Surveys gives good results for employment and unemployment, but they are a bit volatile from month to month. A fall of 0.1 percentage points on the unemployment rate to 5.7 per cent is indeed effectively flat.

That little drop is is not seasonal. It is just the usual level of slight sampling noise - the data are already adjusted for seasonal influences. Nationally, the unemployment rate has been pretty steady since about May, in trend and seasonally adjusted terms.  State level data are, in the nature of survey work, rather less certain than broader, national trends.

However, labour market levels are, in their very nature, lagging indicators. They reflect what the economy was doing over the last 6 months or so, as it takes some time for employers to build up stocks, take on orders, and hire staff. Employment and unemployment levels today don’t tell us much about what the economy is going to do.

So beyond ABS data (on wages, employment, and so on) the Reserve Bank draws on other sources too. Over recent months, RBA comments on the labour market prospects have firmed a little. Just one of the many things they take into account as they gently ease interest rates back from 30 year lows (very expansionary) towards normal levels (neither hotting up nor cooling down the economy). No signs of coming employment weakness seen there, then.

Likewise in other indicators, from other sources. Taking one example, since the early 1990s the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has put out their Monthly Leading Indicator of Employment. This DEEWR measure brings several sources together for a reasonably reliable peek at where employment may head, compared with its long term trend. The latest results this week saw a rise for the 6th successive month. That shows, with some confidence, that employment is likely to be growing faster than its long-term trend, about 9 months from now.

All things, as they say, being equal. While ABS data are good, RBA sources are good and the DEEWR indicator has performed pretty well since the early 1990s,  none of them are perfect. But they have been consistently sound under every colour of Government for the past 20 or 30 years. None of them, of course, can predict with much certainty, if at all, the chance of an unexpected shock from overseas. But on the face of it, the outlook for 2011 is for continuing strength in employment, nationally.

That suggests the RBA case for slowly raising interest rates is pretty right.  It also suggests the deficit is likely to be far more manageable than the “worst case” estimate put forward with proper caution by Treasury. None of these things are set in concrete, nor should they be. But consistently conservative (too gloomy) estimates by RBA or Treasury are a damn good thing on the monetary and fiscal side. Prudently re-estimated from time to time, too -  so we’ve already seen lower estimates of debt, and these look set to fall still lower.  A good thing, and a good result so far.

Lastly, RBA rates don’t just affect home buyers. They affect those with savings, and business expenses and investment. As they should do. Prudent home borrowers, faced with the lowest rates for 30 years, would have done just as they have in past years: as far as they could, they’ll have kept their mortgage payments at the old, higher levels. Now they’ll reap the benefit of their prudence - their payments will stay the same for many months to come.

http://www.workplace.gov.au/workplace/Publications/LabourMarketAnalysis/LeadingIndicatorEmployment/
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6202.0?OpenDocument
http://www.rba.gov.au/MediaReleases/2009/mr-09-23.html
http://www.rba.gov.au/MediaReleases/2009/mr-09-28.html

Simon says:

08:25pm | 10/12/09

Andrew Goff: no one likes a smartarse. Nuff said.

Mr Pastry says:

09:32pm | 10/12/09

@Margaret Gray - the jobs created are the job ads that appear on internet sites - which are not jobs but replications of jobs already advertised.  The agencies are all chasing employers for the fewer jobs on offer and creating multiple listings for the same jobs.  Have a look - I found 12 ads for the same job on one site.

Sherlock says:

08:25am | 11/12/09

I remember the trio of Rudd, Swan and Gillard constantly telling us it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. They went on and on with the same line at every available opportunity.

It didn’t. It just got better. The world’s economy improved and we went along for the ride with it.

It was just as accurate as the one about “the inflation genie being out of the bottle. Who knows the current inflation rate?

Rudd, Swan and Gillard are economic illiterates. They have absolutely no idea of what they are doing. All they know how to do is spend money like drunken sailors and soak those they perceive to be rich.

Working-hard says:

08:39am | 11/12/09

Thanks to Kevin I have a job,my family and kids have presents for Christmas and we could afford to gave money to our daughter to go to Bali.
For the first time in 8 years we can relax and enjoy the holidays,it is what Howard has promised to us long ago.
I am glad I have a job and pay of my bank loan instead of sitting on the dole and complain.
thanks Kevin , good job so far.

Drew (Darlinghurst) says:

01:26pm | 11/12/09

YOU CANT WIN AN ELECTION BY LOOKING TO THE PAST

Tony Abbott and his scary right wing Tories will be in opposition for a VERY VERY LONG TIME.

Merry Christmas

Public Record says:

01:44pm | 11/12/09

Sherlock is trying to re-write recent history.

In this context (labour market) he’s conveniently forgetting how long employment growth was flattened by the GFC and how much unemployment rose.

No matter, it’s….
all on the public record.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/6202.0Main Features4Oct 2009?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=6202.0&issue=Oct 2009#=&view;=

We’ve had a very narrow escape, for very modest cost.

stephen says:

05:39pm | 11/12/09

Margaret gray;  Thirty Thousand jobs were created last month, and global warming by human intervention is real.
To realize the former you want to seperate facts and analyze their meaning to assertain whether those jobs are the reult of Govt policy.
I suppose if you keep analyzing, they must be the outcome of some action by an instigating entity. (Unless the Sun really is getting closer to the Earth.)

All those little things- that is, those little reasons you have ascertained which are the real cause of new jobs - ADDED TOGETHER do not necessarily add up to cause and effect.

Public Record says:

07:53pm | 11/12/09

Job ads and employed persons are not the same thing at all, nor are they measured in the same way. There’s no need to do so, as they are separate bits of the labour picture.

Jobs ads are (largely) for jobs that are vacant:  not yet filled by an employed person. They may be new positions, or existing jobs left vacant by promotion, retirement, death, sacking, career change etc etc etc etc.

Employed persons have jobs: they may be in an existing job, or they may have become employed by taking an advertised job vacancy (whether it was an existing vacant position or a new job.

An employed person may have more than one job, but they are still just one employed person. Likewise an unemployed person - they may be looking for and applying for more than one job, but they are just one unemployed person. The whole point is to estimate the stock of people who are either in work or out of work - they are they inputs or potential labour supply for the economy.

So the ABS Labour Force survey aims by design to estimate people: either employed, unemployed or not in the labour force. Strictly speaking it does not measure “jobs”. It does not in any sense measure or make use of job ad data. No need to, as it surveys people directly, and in a very robust survey of some 29,000 households.

When you need data about “jobs” you need to look elsewhere, such as the ABS employer surveys - the best way to measure earnings, hours, wages job vacancies and so on. Different way of looking at the labour market for a different purpose - labour costs, eg.

The Labour Force Survey for November showed that Employment increased 31,200 (0.3%) to 10,868,200 in seasonalyy adjusted terms. Full-time employment increased 30,800 to 7,627,400 and part-time employment increased slightly, up 300, to 3,240,700.

Loosely speaking, when employment keeps on rising above the previous peak, the extra employed persons are in “new” jobs - ignoring churn and the like.

Looking at the State tables in The Labour Force (6202.0) suggests that the bulk of employment growth (in Nov in seasonally adjusted terms) was in Victoria.

Notably, while unemployment and the unemployemnt rate both rose slightly in SA and in WA, employment also increased slighlty in both States, in seasonally adjusted terms. This is counter to the impression left by the original article, above. However, it is not unusual in recovery to find that labour force particpation increases - as jobs return, people not in work start looking more actively for a job. Thus they cease being “not in the labour force” and become “unemployed” -  and may soon find work. 

In trend terms, employment has been rising slowly for some months in all States and Territories bar Tasmania, most strongly in Vic. Caution: the smoothed trend estimates for Tas and the the ACT and NT are inherently harder to interpret, especially for the most recent 3 months.

See:  http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6202.0 especially
Key Points and Tables 4 to 10 in the pdf.

More detailed results from the November survey will include seasonally adjusted & trend estimates of employment by industry, released as online tables next week: 
See 6291.0.55.003 - Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, Quarterly Next Issue: Nov 2009 expected for release on 17/12/2009
at http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6291.0.55.003

or in the next quarterly publication,
6105.0 - Australian Labour Market Statistics (Next Issue: Jan 2010 expected for release on 08/01/2010)
at http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6105.0

I guess that’s enough spoon feeding for one night. The ABS site is a mine of info once you nut out the structure and how to reduce their urls to the publication ref nos, and all…..on the public record!

Brent says:

08:39pm | 11/12/09

If Australia is the smart country how come it hasn’t realised that the ets and ‘environmental’ issues are all a big rudd distraction from the fact rudd hasn’t made a dent in health, education, state mess ups and economic development.

Public Record says:

09:42pm | 11/12/09

Oops… in SA, employment in Nov was effectively flat, despite a small rise in full-time employment (seasonally adjusted). Tired, me.