If it wasn’t for the current crisis in Victoria, you’d have to look at the July employment report and say: “not bad.” Yep, you could almost say that this is a lot better than expected. But the reality is that we do have Victoria in stage four restrictions so the August unemployment figures are bound to give us less to cheer about.

That said, there were interesting trends that might give us reason to believe that the worst-case scenario could be taken down a scary notch or two.

What’s this worst-case scenario? Try unemployment at 10% plus a fiscal cliff after March next year, when a lot of workers will lose JobKeeper support and zombie businesses with their zombie workers are forced to deal with the light of day, which brings less or no government assistance.

Eventually, ScoMo will have to say “enough’s enough” and we’ll just have to see what businesses and jobs can survive the horrors of a post-pandemic world.

Clearly, I’m assuming that we see a vaccine later this year. That should bring a level of safety for going back to a 2021 version of normality, where we should be able to travel/fly (albeit to less places), go back to CBD offices on mass and enjoy the hospitality industry again, without reservations and fear.

But adjustments to our lives, ‘thanks’ to that damn virus, such as more people working from home, less demand for office space, lower rents, bankrupt/closed bricks and mortar shops and generally a new look economy will bring highish jobless rates for some years.

Before Victoria’s re-infection problems, I thought an 8% jobless rate was possible. Now Treasury and the RBA think it will go to 10%. I hope they’re too pessimistic. Yesterday’s numbers gave us some hope, however these July numbers were helped by Victoria not being in lockdown for most of the month.

August and September job stats could really be hurt by what’s happening down south.

For those who like the facts, this is what the job numbers told us:

• Unemployment rose from 7.4% to 7.5% but economists expected it to go to 7.8%.
• Employment was up 115,000, while economists tipped a small 25,000 rise.
• The participation rate was up a big 0.6% to 64.7%, which is always a positive sign for an economy — workers wanting to work.
• Full-time jobs were up 43,500.
• Part-time jobs were up 71,200.

But this is the number I liked most of all. The ABS says that without JobKeeper, unemployment would have been at 8.3%.

So government assistance is actually only shielding 0.8% of the workforce from joblessness, which is less than I expected.

Another strange but true fact was that Victoria’s unemployment rate actually fell from 7.5% to 6.8%, which I think shows what happens when we can get back to normal. Albeit, Victoria has been brought undone by bad quarantining by security guards with uncontrollable urges!

Also since May, 343,000 jobs have returned nationally, which might mean the number of zombie workers out there may be exaggerated by the ‘too negative’ media. Do you think that’s possible?

One last good sign for employment is that Seek says job vacancies rose 2.3% in July.

Throw in the surprising positive outlook for the economy (relatively speaking) at this week’s profit report show-and-tell, and it gives me reason to think 2021 could be an unpleasant surprise package for pessimists.

Of course, my positivity rests on a vaccine becoming available to a lot of people ASAP.

If you pray, pray for that!