Albanese Government Creates More Jobs Than Any Other Government: Employment Minister

Staff members prepare chocolate at the Lindt Cafe in Sydney, Australia, on March 20, 2015. Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

More jobs have been created under the Albanese government than any previous Australian government, Employment Minister Murray Watt has said.

In his address to the National Press Club of Australia on Sept. 18, Watt outlined the Labor government’s employment achievements.

“Last month’s figures showed that a total of 989,200 jobs have been created since the Albanese Labor government came to office,” he said.

“That is more jobs created in a single parliamentary term than any government in Australia’s history.

“We’re seeing more Australians working than ever before, with the participation rate reaching a record high of 67.1 percent last month.”

At the same time, the minister said more women were participating in the workforce than before and were leading the “job booms.”

“Fifty-two percent of all jobs created have been jobs for women, and an extra 510,000 Australian women are in jobs since we were elected,” he said.

Non-Private Sector Thrives While Private Sector Stagnates: Deloitte

Watt’s remarks come as a recent report by Deloitte Access Economics revealed that job growth in the private sector was stagnant in the past year.

The report said that while employment had been growing at a healthy rate over 2024, most of the jobs generated were in the non-market sector, which is composed of three industries: education and training, health care and social assistance, and public administration and safety.

“According to the ABS Labour Account, employment gains in the year to March 2024 totalled 322,000 people. Of this, 316,000 people came from the non-market sector,” report author David Rumbens said on Aug. 21.

“As a result, non-market sector employment grew by 7.6 percent in the year to March 2024, compared to just 0.1 percent growth from market sector industries.”

Deloitte also forecasted that Australian businesses would not hire in the next 12 months.

Australian Industry Group CEO Innes Willox also made this observation.

“A key factor behind labour market strength is the disproportionately strong growth in public sector employment with businesses increasingly reporting increased competition in the labour market from the public sector,” he said on Sept. 19.

Meanwhile, at an event in August, Matt Barrie, the founder and CEO of the freelance marketplace website Freelancer, said most of jobs created in the past year were related to the taxpayer-funded National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) economy as well as the international student industry.

“Only 165,000 jobs were created outside of healthcare and social assistance in this entire country in the last 18 months,” he said.

Government’s Workplace Reform

Meanwhile, Watt commented on the Labor government’s recent workplace reform, saying it had not damaged the economy as some had forewarned.

In 2023, the government introduced the “Closing Loopholes” reform, which brought about significant changes to businesses’ hiring and employment practices. This reform established new rules for the employment of casual workers and the remuneration of labour-hire workers.

The reform also changed some enterprise bargaining processes and imposed harsher penalties on employers’ underpayment practices.

This attracted strong opposition from the business community, which warned that it would negatively impact businesses’ operations and result in job losses.

However, Watt said evidence had shown the opposite.

“There is no evidence the economy has collapsed due to our workplace reforms,” he said.

“To the contrary, the facts show that many employers are benefiting from our emphasis on cooperation and rewarding employees.

“More businesses are reaching agreements with their workers and unions.”

Pointing to workforce data, the minister said Australians were getting more secure jobs, with the level of casualisation in the workforce falling from 23.2 percent in May 2022 to 22.5 percent in May 2024.

In addition, he said more businesses had been created in the past few years.

“Since our government was elected, 9,000 new firms employing between five and 200 workers have been created, while another 500 new firms employing more than 200 workers have opened their doors,” Watt said.

Regarding wage growth, Watt said the workplace reform had caused real wages to increase in the previous quarters.

“Annual real wages grew 0.3 percent through the year to the June quarter of 2024,” he said.

“Annual real wages have been growing for three consecutive quarters, a massive turnaround from the situation we inherited when annual real wages were falling by 3.4 percent.”

Employment Minister Murray Watt speaks during a press conference in Brisbane, Australia on July 22, 2022. Dan Peled/Getty Images

Reforms Added Burdens Instead of Helping: Manufacturers

However, during a recent parliamentary inquiry hearing, manufacturers raised concerns that the government’s workplace reform had added more burden to businesses.

Jon Seeley, the group managing director of the air conditioner manufacturer Seeley International, said the complexity and ambiguity of new laws regarding casual employment had caused his company to stop employing casual staff and amalgamate the company’s operations.

Seeley said the change would lead to the redundancy of 85 permanent employees, many of whom had worked for the company for 20 years.

Another director said his company had to incur additional labour costs to manage the change in industrial relation laws, resulting in an increase of $600,000 (US$407,000) in overhead costs.