Appearing before the Senate economics legislation committee on Wednesday, Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy said more than a million workers were still being supported by JobKeeper at the start of the March quarter.
Deputy secretary of Treasury’s fiscal group Jenny Wilkinson said between 100,000 and 150,000 of these employees were classed as “vulnerable” meaning they were at risk of losing their jobs when support comes off at the end of the month.
“When we observed the transition period at the end of December, it was the people on zero or low hours that we believed were the ones more likely to lose their jobs – some of them have transitioned to other jobs but that’s one cohort we’ve looked at,” Ms Wilkinson said.
“When we look at the data, we find they’re reasonably broadly distributed across regions and industries. There’s more of a concentration in a few industries which have been more affected by the restrictions, but those vulnerable workers are spread across different industries.”
Ms Wilkinson said the dispersion of vulnerable workers across industries made it difficult for Treasury to formulate a specific replacement support package to replace JobKeeper, and that urban workers had been particularly affected.
“The areas in the December quarter that stood out the most were the CBDs, that was where we tended to have a higher concentration of workers on zero and low hours,” Ms Wilkinson said.
“We’ve been surprised at how broadly spread it is across regions and even in sectors that are reporting high activity like construction are still in JobKeeper more than anticipated,” Dr Kennedy added.
“It’s surprising that it hasn’t been targeted in where you think it might be like restaurants – some in some areas are doing well and others are doing poorly.
“The CBD is definitely one we can draw out – Melbourne and Sydney CBDs are affected not so much by activity restrictions, but that employees are not in their places of work so they’re not passing by. Those cities also typically receive a large proportion of international travellers.”
However Ms Wilkinson said in the case of businesses largely reliant on tourism, the government was reluctant to go on supporting these indefinitely given the return of international travel was still far from certain.
“There are tourism operators in areas that have been dominated by international tourists who have pivoted to a domestic market and others who haven’t,” she said.
“We’ve provided assistance for a year to help businesses maintain their connections with employees, but going forward it’s likely to be some time before we have the level of international tourism that we had before, so you want businesses to look at the opportunities available now and pivot their businesses.”
