Does the ABS stand for All BS?

Yesterday I was far richer for attending The State of the Nation – a quarterly report delivered by Australia’s largest and only Australian owned pollster – Roy Morgan Research. This quarter’s report had a focus on Rural Australia.

I encourage you to read the entire report at roymorgan.com.au, but I want to share with you a nugget from this goldmine of information.

Roy Morgan Research places the unemployment rate at an average of 9.3%. That’s 8.6% in our Capital Cities and 10.7% in Rural Australia.

This figure is double that of the ABS, which places unemployment at an average of 4.9%. This figure excludes anyone who works even 1 hour per week – even if it was unpaid.

The ABS uses an international standard developed at a time when consultancies and part-time work were scarce, and women rarely worked.

Roy Morgan Research does the sensible thing. Morgan just asks people whether they are looking for work! The real level is unemployment is roughly twice that declared by the government.

The Reserve Bank takes the ABS statistics as gospel. If they took note of the real unemployment rate, interest rates would have to be lower. This in turn would lower the exchange rate, helping our exporters – our farmers and our miners. We would become more competitive.

But the politicians hide behind unemployment rates they know are completely wrong. It’s about time the government admitted almost 10% of Australians are unemployed or 17.5% if we include the underemployed. That’s almost 1 in 5.

The government should be basing their assumptions on Roy Morgan Research, who have their finger on the nation’s pulse, and not the ABS.