
Australia unemployment to soar to 11.1% by June - hhs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-24/australia-unemployment-to-soar-to-11-1-by-june-westpac-s-evans
======
BLKNSLVR
First day after mandatory shutdown of various businesses where people
congregate in a "disorganized" manner, and Centrelink (Government service for
the unemployed - to put it very crudely) has massive queues and the website
crashes due to overload[0]

Article linked to specifically says:

"The Government is estimating at least 1 million people could be made
unemployed, joining the 700,000 people already receiving unemployment
benefits.

That could take Australia's unemployment rate from 5.1 per cent to closer to
15 per cent."

    
    
      700k unemployed =  5.1%
      1.7m unemployed = 15.0%
    

Therefore employable population is between 11.3m and 13.7m

[0][https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-24/centrelink-
minister-s...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-24/centrelink-minister-
stuart-robert-not-anticipate-coronavirus/12080612)

------
drstewart
Tired of all these headlines with the use of emotionally laden words like
"soar", "crash", "plummet", "skyrocket", "plunge", "collapse", etc. Especially
the last few weeks journalists are in overdrive with their thesaurus usage.

Why don't you just present the facts and let the reader decide what literary
narrative to assign to the story?

~~~
docdeek
What adjective would you use to describe a rise in the unemployment rate from
around 5% to above 11% in three months?

I understand and agree with the idea that emotionally laden words don’t always
add much to the story, but in this case I think ‘soar’ is probably close to
the mark. Australia’s unemployment rate peaked at 11.2% in 1992, and has only
gone above 7% for a couple of months in the last 20 years.

[https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/australia/unemployment...](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/australia/unemployment-
rate)

~~~
drstewart
"Australia unemployment may rise to 11.1% by June" would be a reasonable
headline for this specific article.

~~~
andrewash
CNN engagement will _plunge_ with these kind of neutral titles

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scanny
I wonder how it's neighbour New Zealand would fair given that they are on a
full lockdown with compulsary self-isolation for all citizens?[0]

The article mentions that a "turnaround will come in the final three months of
2020", but surely Australia is going to be impacted just has badly as other
states and this isn't even the beginning?

[1]
[https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/12046807...](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120468079/coronavirus-
new-zealand-has-a-threat-system-heres-how-it-works-and-how-it-will-affect-you)

~~~
keithnz
I'm in NZ.... hard to tell, we have some significant financial aid for
businesses to finance and pay wages during the lockdown. Not sure how that's
going to work out. It feels like we are possibly in a bit of a sweet spot
where we are small enough but big enough to weather our way through this, but
hard to know anything for sure. I think we will see the tourism industry
savaged a fair bit.

~~~
doldge
similarly in NZ.

The health care system is pretty abysmal here which I think is why the
government is acting so strongly now; The city I'm in has just 18 ICU beds for
a population of around 500,000. We're heading into winter as well and from
what I've heard the government is expecting to hit peek case-rates in August.

If that is the case, I expect the full lockdowns will be a periodic thing over
the coming months in order to keep cases manageable.

Too early to really tell how this is going to play out, but I don't think the
current financial measures are enough; I expect we'll continue to see them
expand in the coming weeks in an attempt to keep businesses a float.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
I read that in Australia there are a total of 2,200 ICU beds for the ~25
million population. As a result of COVID-19 they're increasing this number as
much as possible, but if the infection rates continue the current trend, then
there are going to be large numbers of people dying due to the lack of
resources.

    
    
      18 in 500,000 is 0.00366%
      2,200 in 25,000,000 is 0.0088%
    

More than double, but still likely to be woefully inadequate.

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lazylizard
Given the lockdown...isnt that sort of expected? If most people are at home,
then what work is being done? And even before this, when they were
progressively limiting the number of people who could travel to australia, you
would expect employment in tourism related industries to go down a lot.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
I’m in Tasmania.

As of ~11hrs ago we appear to have no community transmitted cases.

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-24/has-tasmania-been-
spa...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-24/has-tasmania-been-spared-of-
the-worst-coronavirus-hit/12082798)

------
ojbyrne
Seems like an underestimate.

------
droithomme
And so? US will be at 20% of the population not working soon. Why single out
Australia.

~~~
WantonQuantum
This is one article among literally thousands of articles reporting the
economic impact of covid-19 around the world. I wouldn't call that singling
out Australia.

