Australia’s unemployment rate last month jumped to 6 percent — its worst in a decade — with the economy shedding 3,700 jobs amid a turbulent transition away from mining, data showed yesterday.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the jobless rate increased from 5.8 percent in December last year, with some 7,100 full-time positions lost, which were only partially offset by 3,400 extra part-time roles.
It is the highest unemployment since the global financial crisis, when it peaked at 5.8 percent, and its worst since July 2003.
Photo: AFP
It also matches the Australian government’s forecast jobless peak for the year to June 30.
Australia is undergoing a bumpy economic transition with its decade-long Asia-led mining investment boom reaching its peak, and the ailing manufacturing sector in dire straits with the announced exit this week of Toyota, its last remaining automaker.
The Reserve Bank of Australia forecast unemployment to continue edging higher in its quarterly monetary policy update last week as spending in the mining sector unwinds.
A further 1,300 jobs were lost yesterday with the collapse of engineering firm Forge Group, whose clients include Rio Tinto and BHP — both of whom are tightening their belts as commodity prices soften due to a spike of new supply coming online and slowing demand from China.
Reflecting this, Australia’s mining and manufacturing states fared worst, led by resources-rich Western Australia, where there was a 0.5 percentage point increase in the jobless rate to 5.1 percent.
Australian Opposition leader Bill Shorten warned of “more pain coming down the road,” with announced job losses at major firms including Toyota, Holden and Qantas yet to factor into the figures.
Shorten said there had been “one job lost every three minutes” since conservative Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott-led government came to power in September last year.
During the election campaign Abbott promised to create 1 million new jobs by axing corporate pollution and mining profits taxes and launching a major road-building drive.
Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said the rise in unemployment was in line with the government’s own forecasts of 6 percent this financial year and 6.25 percent for each of the following three years as Australia’s workforce ages and younger workers delay entry.
“If we want to get the unemployment rate down, not only from 6 percent, but from 6.25 percent which is the current forecast, we need to improve the growth rate of the economy,” he said, warning it would involve “structural change.”
Hockey said the economy had expanded at below-trend pace for five of the last six years. Growth in the year to Dec. 31 was 2.3 percent, well below long-term averages of 3.25 percent.
The government has said that Australia will be in deficit for up to a decade, and warned citizens to “adjust their expectations of what government can sustainably provide” ahead of a May budget expected to include deep spending cuts and asset sales.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to