17 Mar JobSeeker Update – Income support insights

JobSeeker December 2021 update

Unlike the unemployment rate which only reflects people in the labour force actively seeking work, the number of JobSeeker recipients in any region is an indicator of underemployment, unemployment and income support need.

JobSeeker is a financial assistance program for people aged between 22 years and Aged Pension age, who are looking for work and who qualify under income and asset tests.  It also supports eligible people when they are sick or injured and cannot do their usual work or study for a short time.

The latest quarterly JobSeeker recipient data covering Local Government Areas and SA2s has now been released by the Department of Social Services for the December 2021 quarter.

The REMPLAN blog published on 31st January 2022 discussed the September 2021 Small Area Labour Market unemployment estimates which indicated that around 64% of SA2s recorded a decrease in their unemployment rate of the year to the September quarter.

However, as our blog in March last year highlighted, JobSeeker data provides a different perspective on not only unemployment, but general welfare need, include for people that are working but on low incomes.

The latest December 2021 can be accessed via the REMPLAN JobSeeker Explorer

As an example, the National Skills Commission estimated in September 2021 that the City of Greater Bendigo unemployment rate was 4.4%.  However, the Department of Social Services data for the same period indicated that 8.1% of the local labour force were JobSeeker recipients.

In December 2021, JobSeeker payments in local government areas ranged from Murchison in Western Australia where there were no recipients, to Belyuen in the Northern Territory where 53.5% of the local labour market were JobSeeker recipients.

LGAs with the highest proportion of JobSeeker recipients as a proportion of the labour force were generally concentrated in smaller rural and outback communities.  There were 25 LGAs where more than one-third of the 22-64 years population was in receipt of JobSeeker support.

As well as displaying both the number of recipients in each area, and its proportion of the labour force, the REMPLAN JobSeeker Explorer also shows where the area ranks on a national scale and relative to other regions in the State as illustrated below for Central Darling Shire and New South Wales.

REMPLAN publishes a range of free economic and demographic data which can be viewed by visiting our Data Explorers webpage. 

Questions?  Please do not hesitate to contact the REMPLAN team for further information or call us on 1300 737 443.