Jobs down at 6% in Australia amid virus outbreak

Millions of people have lost their jobs between mid-March and early April as Australia faces economic contraction on Tuesday amid the virus outbreak. A lot of businesses cease their operations, which indicate an increase in the natural rate of unemployment for the next few months. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released figures that show a 6% decline in jobs between March 14 and April 4. Employees also suffered a 6.7% reduction in their take home pay. The payroll records used were provided by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Its system includes 99% of big employers with twenty or more employees and 71% of small employers.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) presented an economic update to the gross domestic product (GDP) of its country saying that it might decrease “significantly” in June and stay subdued through September.

While the spread of the virus infection had decelerated, the outbreak from March had completely made an impact on recent figures as it had blown up from less than a hundred to a whopping 6,600 cases. It caused the government to close businesses, prohibit international travels and big gatherings, and observe social-distancing.

On April 7, the board members of RBA held a meeting and talked about the effects of these limitations to the economy of Australia. Its government a monetary budget worth A$320 billion to help lessen the impact. However, around 780,000 jobs were already lost by early April, according to the ABS data.

“The largest impact of net job losses, in percentage terms, was for people aged under 20, for whom jobs decreased by 9.9%,” Bjorn Jarvis, a program manager in the labor statistics branch of the ABS, said in a statement.