Does “unemployment” mean anything anymore?
Economists are now telling us that the “good news” of very low unemployment could push up inflation and the cost of living. But what if they way that “full employment” and “unemployment” are measured is flawed? One analyst certainly thinks this is the case, which means that not only might the measures we use to track the health of the economy be wrong, but our ability to measure the impact of our new industrial relations laws could also be hampered. Dr Richard Denniss formerly worked with the Australia Institute and now acts as an adviser to the Australian Greens. He recently wrote a paper on the issue called “Unemployment is in the eye of the beholder”. He explained to Erica Vowles why he believes the way we count unemployment is flawed, making the term “unemployment” misleading.