Opinion Bosses take note: workers will soon have the upper hand
Former NSW premier Neville Wran was the first politician – but far from the last – to say the election would be about “jobs, jobs, jobs”. That line captured perfectly one of the great economic certainties of our age: you can never, ever have enough jobs to go around.That’s what most of us think, and the reason we think it is that it’s been true for the past 50 years. That’s how long it’s been since we had a rate of unemployment so low no one worried much about it., at 3.
Now, you can argue this happy outcome is just a temporary consequence of the pandemic. For two years, the official interest rate was almost zero, and governments – federal and state – were spending like wounded bulls. Then you can argue that it only needs Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe to step too hard on the interest-rate brakes and we – as with many other developed economies – will be plunged into recession and rising unemployment.The last time unemployment was this low in Australia, the assisted passage scheme was still operating.
Business people are nothing if not opportunistic. When workers are plentiful, they pick and choose and make demands. But when workers are hard to find, they become wonderful people whose only concern is their workers’ welfare. But setting high immigration targets is one thing; attaining them is another. These days, migrants come mainly from developing countries. But all the other rich countries have an ageing problem, so we’ll be competing against them for takers.
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