Jobseeker claims jump to 5.8% of labour force

Fri, 24 Apr 2020

About 30,000 people have claimed the jobseeker benefit in the past five weeks, amounting to 5.8 percent of the labour force, in an election year where rising unemployment is set to become a political football. While not a perfect measure of the actual rate of unemployment – which was sitting at 4 percent at Dec. 31 in the last official reading – the Treasury is using the new claims in its covid-19 dashboard of economic indicators. Since March 20 – the Friday before the national lockdown was announced – jobseeker claims have climbed almost...

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