Anglicare’s annual Jobs Availability Snapshot proves that government propaganda about unemployed people as job snobs or drug addicts is nonsense. There simply aren’t enough jobs to go around, especially for people who lack qualifications or work experience: “It found there were about 100,000 disadvantaged jobseekers in May… while there were only 18,200 low-skilled ‘level 5’ jobs advertised.” That equates to “5.49 people competing for each entry-level job”. Anglicare calls for an end to punitive measures and a shift to government job creation programs. Meanwhile, the Australian Unemployed Workers Union has put forward a constructive proposal to deal with this: a Green Jobs Guarantee, focussed on the needs of regional Australia. Their proposal argues that “linking the objective of full employment via a Job Guarantee to the urgent task of preventing catastrophic global warming is an absolute imperative”, and would target the local needs of regional communities with an investment in training and public employment.
17 October 2019