Saved by JobKeeper

A REPORT by the Commonwealth Treasury has confirmed that the JobKeeper program successfully safeguarded the Australian economy during the “biggest economic shock since the Great Depression.”

Four million Australians and 1M businesses were assisted through JobKeeper payments, which were targeted to assist businesses strongly affected by the pandemic, businesses at substantial risk of shedding employees, sectors hit by public health restrictions, small businesses, and not-for-profits.

Ninety-nine percent of entities receiving JobKeeper had an annual turnover of less than $50M or were not-for-profit organisations, and 99 percent of businesses who experienced a significant 30-50 percent decline in turnover were small businesses, with an average of four supported employees.

Without the Government’s fiscal support, including JobKeeper, Treasury estimates that unemployment would have peaked at least 5 percentage points higher, and would have remained above 12 percent for two years.
JobKeeper enabled the Australian economy to rebound strongly, saving more than 700,000 jobs. By March 2021, Australia had surpassed pre-COVID levels of GDP and employment, a better outcome than all major advanced economies.

Treasury said, “A central consideration in designing the macroeconomic support package was ensuring the overall level of fiscal support was sufficient to provide a credible offset to the economic shock being experienced.”

The report on the first six months of JobKeeper demonstrates that the program did what it was intended to do, keeping employers and employees connected, saving hundreds-of-thousands of jobs and supporting Australia’s world-leading economy to get back to business.

The report is available on the Treasury website.