About 60 per cent of our resume clients are women. We are seeing a rapid rise in the number of young women using our services, in large part due to the theme of this story.
Women are bearing the brunt of the Covid-19 economic downturn as Melbourne turns in to a ghost town, new virus outbreaks in Sydney and the death of retail and the arts sector in Adelaide.
Many women work part-time or casual in accommodation, hospitality and the arts, and these areas are hit the hardest.
Payroll jobs as measured by the Australian Bureau of Statistics dropped by 0.6 per cent nationally in the week between July 4 and 11, as Victoria started to introduce suburb-by-suburb lockdowns.
The ABS said total payroll jobs were down by 7.3 per cent in Victoria since the middle of March, the worst of any state or territory.
Payrolls also fell in NSW by 0.7 per cent between July 4 and 11 after a 0.3 per cent in the previous survey covering late June. Jobs are down by 5.3 per cent since mid-March.
In South Australia, payroll dropped a colossal 5.5 per cent, with arts and recreation falling a staggering 21.8 per cent. This comes on top of a projected $2B write down on GST revenues, slashing the Federal Government’s contribution to that state by almost one third.
SA women want to work more than 800,000 hours than they currently are.
There was also a 22.6 per cent fall in wages in the mining sector across Australia. Figures for weekly payroll and jobs can be found here.
The July employment report may see a further spike in the official measure of unemployment, which reached a 22-year high of 7.4 per cent last month. In real terms, unemployment is now closer to 14 per cent.
The Roy Morgan-ANZ weekly measure of consumer sentiment, released on Tuesday, highlighted the damage to confidence because of the Melbourne and Sydney outbreaks, with business confidence deep in negative territory.
ANZ’s head of Australian economics, David Plank, said people were reacting to the fresh outbreaks and concern about the future of government support programs.
“The rise in pandemic related deaths in Victoria and new case numbers rising in Sydney seem to be sapping confidence. The reductions in the JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments from the end of September may have also weighed,” he said.