Just how much room in the 'warehouse' is there? The ALP has already parked a large number of people in that warehouse so I'm wondering if there's any room left.
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The government has manipulated the official statistics. It has compromised the reputation of the Treasury. An example of the endless spin cycle is the manipulation of the unemployment rate, a basic measure of the economy and thus, indirectly, a measure of the government's performance. The official rate is 5.7 per cent. It has been trending up for a year, from 5.2 per cent, a 10 per cent rise in 12 months. The real unemployment rate is higher, about 6.2 per cent according to a study by Andrew Baker of the Centre for Independent Studies.
Baker found that more than 100,000 job-seekers had been moved out of the unemployment ranks by shifting them into training schemes. ''An astonishing 360,000 unemployed people are classified as non-job-seekers,'' Baker wrote in his centre's monograph. ''The number [in training schemes has] skyrocketed from 62,500 in 2009 to 150,000 in 2012 … People on welfare who are not required to look for work will stay on welfare longer.'' He estimates that if the unemployed who are classified as ''non-job-seekers'' was included in the unemployment baseline number, the rate would be 6.2 per cent.
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Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) finds something is amiss with Australia's unemployment data, noting recently: ''The non job-seeker population is so large that it needs more analysis and attention.''
Not good, considering that when Rudd came to power in 2007 the official, uncooked, unemployment rate was 4.5 per cent. Despite a resources boom and $300 billion in government deficit spending, the unemployment rate has risen about 37 per cent under Labor.
**http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smile-youre-on-candidate-camera-20130825-2sjrn.h... **The Sydney Morning Herald; I'm sure you'll agree it has an impeccable pedigree. It's the record of truth