• Nearly one million Australians have applied for JobSeeker in the last six weeks, the government’s unemployment support payment and the successor to Newstart, according to government figures.
• The Department of Social Services revealed on Thursday that more than 530,000 Australians have been approved for the program since the middle of March, with more than 260,000 more claims waiting to be processed.
• When the remaining applications are processed, the figures suggest more than 700,000 more Australians will have become reliant on JobSeeker payments in the space of just six weeks.
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The official stats are out and the verdict is in. We’ve lost a hell of a lot of jobs.

Figures released by the Department of Social Services show that long snaking Centrelink lines have simply been transported online, with nearly one million Australians applying to receive Jobseeker payments in the last six weeks alone.

“We have never seen an economic shock of this speed, magnitude and shape, reflecting that this is both a significant supply and demand shock,” Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy told a public senate inquiry this week.

Noting the government stands by its unemployment forecast of 10%, Kennedy noted the speed of the current economic crisis would eclipse the Great Depression of the 1930s.

“Unemployment rose to higher levels in the Great Depression but it did that over the course of a couple of years, these movements are happening in just a couple of months,” he said.

One glance at stats suggests such an assessment is hardly hyperbole. At the end of April, more than 1.34 million Australians were receiving Jobseeker payments from the government. Compared to its predecessor Newstart — replaced in mid-March – that’s an additional 533,000 Australians who now rely on Centrelink.

The consequences are astounding, indicating more than half a million Australians have been laid off in a few short weeks. Consider too the fact that there remains more than a quarter of a million applications outstanding, the final approved JobSeeker number could quickly rise above 700,000 – a quantum eerily close to the one flagged by the ABS last week.

Such a large number of layoffs is made more extraordinary by the fact it is in spite of the federal government’s $130 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy program, to which more than a quarter of a million businesses have already formally applied, and which has attracted the interest of at least 600,000 more.

Without it, it’s easy to see why Treasury and economists forecast unemployment would rise above 15%.

While the nation will be thankful such estimates have been forgotten, the threat of further job losses is anything but neutralised.

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