Page 922 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 21 April 2021
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going to support an onward, upward trajectory for dwelling investment, rolling into fiscal year 2021-22.
Perhaps the most important thing to see is that private business investment has picked up. This has been a major problem for Australia, outside the mining sector. Clearly, the mining sector is not an influential sector within the territory economy. We look to private business investment as the way that our economy will grow beyond this current fiscal stimulus period, fuelled both by commonwealth and by ACT government policy settings.
In the December quarter private business investment increased by 6.3 per cent. This is good because it leads to the creation of more jobs outside the public sector. That is a story that I want to report to the Assembly this morning that is again encouraging. Pre pandemic, the ACT had more job vacancies than we had unemployed people. That situation obviously changed at the peak of the pandemic, when unemployment increased and job vacancies reduced. We have now seen, over the year, a near 23 per cent increase in job vacancies. According to the ABS data for February this year, total job vacancies now sit at 8,200 in the ACT—8,200 vacant jobs.
It is an important number to remember, Madam Speaker: 8,200. Right now, that equates to the number of unemployed people in the territory. We have 8,200 job vacancies and we have 8,200 unemployed people. So we are heading back to the situation we were in before, when we had more vacancies than unemployed people.
Obviously, this puts some pressure on certain industry sectors to find skilled staff. I refer members to the comments by Minister Steel in relation to the take-up of a wide variety of training opportunities over the course of the last 12 months, which will go to match those unemployed people, and people who are looking to change jobs, with the vacancies that we have in our economy.
It is also important in that it tells a broader story about the labour market recovery for the ACT. Over the month to March this year, according to the ABS weekly payroll jobs and wages data, total employee jobs increased by half a per cent in the ACT to now be 4.4 per cent above the levels that we saw at this time last year.
The really important story here—and I know members have asked for commentary in relation to gender perspectives in economic data—is that I can advise the Assembly that female employee jobs have shown a stronger recovery than male employee jobs. By the week ending 27 March 2021, the number of women in employment in the ACT, and indeed in Australia, is now higher than the levels of a year ago. It is now male employee jobs that remain below their pre-pandemic levels.
If we look at particular industry sectors, accommodation and food services is still the most heavily affected industry across the COVID period, both here in the ACT and in Australia. Employee jobs in this industry are still lower than they were pre pandemic.
Looking through a demographic lens, the ABS data shows that employment is up for all age groups, except those aged 15 to 19 and 20 to 29. Our challenge, even though we have the lowest youth unemployment rate in Australia, we have the lowest level of
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