Australian unemployment rate drops down to 3.5%
Australia's unemployment rate has dropped to 3.5% after more than 32,000 jobs were added in June.
Transcript
00:00 Well whilst it's positive to see good unemployment numbers out today, 3.5%, sitting beneath those
00:10 numbers is a much more concerning trend.
00:14 The reality is that Australians are working more for less.
00:19 What we see in these numbers is Australians working more for less.
00:24 What we see is a 5.6% increase in hours worked over the last year.
00:30 Australians working harder to earn the income they have to, to pay their mortgages, to pay
00:34 their energy bills, to pay all of their bills.
00:38 But at the same time we see an economy shattering to a halt.
00:42 Productivity is in a sharp reverse.
00:44 Indeed, we know productivity has fallen 4.6% in the last year.
00:50 That's almost half of the gains of the last coalition government being lost in a single
00:56 year.
00:57 This means Australians working more for less and that's exactly what we're also seeing
01:02 in the wage data where inflation is running much faster than wages and that means Australians
01:09 are going backwards.
01:10 We need policies from this government that ensure Australians and Australia goes forwards.
01:17 That means having the right fiscal policies, the right productivity policies containing
01:22 its spending.
01:23 Indeed, today we see the Productivity Commission questioning rightly some of the spending that
01:28 Labor is making right now that's taking us backwards, that's causing productivity to
01:34 go in exactly the wrong direction.
01:36 Industrial relations policy going in the wrong direction.
01:39 Approval's not being made fast enough.
01:42 All of this is hampering Australia's productivity.
01:47 It means Australians are working more for less and that's exactly the opposite of what
01:51 we need to see at a time like this when we need downward pressure on inflation, we need
01:56 upward pressure on real wages and we want to see that strong Labor market translate
02:01 into better outcomes for all Australians.
02:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]