Let me take you back to early 2020, when the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus and the resulting public health response led to the sharpest deterioration in labour market conditions in many decades. Hundreds of thousands of Australians lost their jobs, and an equally large number were stood down or had their hours cut.
This was a time of extreme uncertainty, with a deadly virus threatening people’s health and livelihoods and no vaccines in sight. There were credible projections that the unemployment rate would rise to 15 per cent, and our own forecasts from the time had the unemployment rate remaining high for several years (Graph 1).