Australia's jobless rate fall to 6.6% - the lowest since the start of the Covid pandemic
- Australia's jobless rate fell to 6.6 per cent in December - lowest since April 2020
- Last month, 50,000 new jobs were created after Melbourne lockdowns ended
- Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared JobKeeper will not be extended
Australia's jobless rate fell to 6.6 per cent in December - the lowest since the start of the Covid pandemic.
The end of Melbourne's three-month lockdown is helping the national economy with the unemployment rate last month falling as 50,000 new jobs were created.
New Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed a jobless rate of 6.6 per cent in December, down from November's 6.8 per cent.
This was the lowest unemployment level since April's 6.4 per cent, the first full month of Covid shutdowns following the World Health Organisation's declaration of a pandemic in March.
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Australia's jobless rate fell to 6.6 per cent in December - the lowest since the start of the Covid pandemic. Pictured is a Centrelink queue in Adelaide in April when the unemployment rate stood at 6.4 per cent
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Australia's jobless rate is still above March's 5.2 per cent, taken during the first fortnight of that month before overseas tourists were kept out of the country.
But it is well below July's 7.5 per cent jobless rate, which was the highest since November 1998.
Since that time, the number of Australians officially without a job has fallen from a record-high above one million to 912,000 as of December.
Australia's recovery from the 2020 Covid recession is still patchy with more part-time jobs created than full-time ones.
'The recovery in hours worked has been slower than the recovery in employment,' the ABS's head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said.
In December, 12.91million people had a job but that number is still 87,600 below March's 12.998million.
The official labour force data was released on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared JobKeeper wage subsidies would not be extended beyond March 28.
'We can't run the Australian economy on government money forever,' Mr Morrison told Sydney radio 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley on Wednesday.
JobKeeper was introduced in April as a flat $1,500 a fortnight payment to be passed on from affected businesses to employees who were furloughed during lockdown.
The initial $70billion program covering 3.5million workers was extended under a $16billion sequel plan to cover two million fewer Australians.
Eligibility was tightened on September 28, with the fortnightly payment reduced to $1,200 for those who put in 20 hours or more with those putting in less time getting $750 every two weeks.
Since the start of 2021, JobKeeper has been diluted further, with staff rostered on for 20 hours or more getting $1,000 as everyone else received $650 a fortnight until March 28.
Australia's lowest annual population growth in more than 100 years has also hit inner-city cafes, with international students no longer arriving in big numbers.
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