Australia may have lost three fourths of a million jobs between middle of March and the first weeks of April, when huge portions of the economy were shuttered to contain the onslaught of the pandemic, suggesting a large increase in the jobless rate in the next few months.
Latest data from the Bureau of Statistics Tuesday indicated employment registered by the Australian Tax Office payrolls dropped 6 percent between March 14 and April 4. Companies' average incomes decreased 6.7 percent.
According to the Australian Reserve Bank, the country is expected to face the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Australia has already lost 800,000 jobs, the Australian Statistics Bureau reported.
The central bank laid down an economic update on Tuesday forecasting a 10 percent decrease in national production in the first six months of the year, a staggeringly high 20 percent decrease in working hours and jobless rates seen to reach 10 percent in two months.
Philip Lowe, the governor of Australia's central bank, has estimated that the unemployment rate in Australia will rise to double digits by June.
Speaking Tuesday via video connection, the governor disclosed that the health crisis is likely to create the worst contraction in national output and revenue since the 1930s.
The country's jobless rate is expected to be about 10 percent by June, "though I am confident that it might be lower than this if companies are able to keep their workers on lower hours," Lowe said.
Lowe commended the government for its JobKeeper program and stated the jobless figures would have soared much higher without it. However, Lowe added that unemployment may remain high for the foreseeable future, while salary growth would remain impeded.
The central bank chief emphasized that inflation was seen to drop in the June period, perhaps to a negative level for the first time in nearly six decades. He also disclosed that despite the country being in a solid position before the outbreak, a sharp recovery was unlikely.
The Australian government has allocated $214 billion in fiscal aid, including doubling the value of the Jobseeker jobless benefit to $1,100 a fortnight and giving out an estimated six million employees a $1,500 fortnightly salary subsidy.
Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases in Australia remains quite small with the pace of growth easing significantly in the past few days.
However, the virus has spread steadily from under a hundred cases in March to over 6,600, prompting health authorities to close down non-essential businesses, suspend overseas travel and large events while enforcing social distancing measures.
