Media Release

Peter Gutwein MP
Shadow Treasurer

Thursday 14th January 2010

Tasmania’s unemployment rate up

No matter what spin the Treasurer tries to put on today’s unemployment data, he cannot avoid the fact that on a trend basis, we now have one of the worst unemployment rates of any Australian state or territory. We are ahead of only Queensland and the basket-case economy of New South Wales.

This result comes in the same week that Tasmania slipped down Commsec’s rankings of all states and territories and just days after the ANZ job advertisement index showed that there was a drop in the number of jobs being filled, which goes against the national trend.

This goes to show that Labor has taken its eye off the ball and has abandoned the economy in an attempt to spend its way back into power. When you take a close look at the numbers is proves how bad this Government is at managing the economy.

In December 2009, 400 jobs disappeared, 200 more people became unemployed and the unemployment rate jumped to 5.5% on trend basis.

In the 12 months to December 2009, the figures are even worse. 8,100 jobs have disappeared, 2,400 more people are unemployed and the unemployment rate has gone from 4.4% to 5.5%.

No doubt, the Government will claim that on a seasonally adjusted basis unemployment is actually dropping. However, as the Treasurer himself said on 13 March 2009:

“The ABS recommends using the trend data series for business or policy analysis, especially for a small economy such as Tasmania.”

Based on that statement it would be hypocritical of the Treasurer or Premier to now claim that seasonally adjusted figures were the only numbers to look at.