Record figure for unemployed

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33740, 13 January 1975, Page 13

Record figure for unemployed

(New Zealand Press Association)

MELBOURNE, January 12. Unemployment in Australia has reached its highest level on record with 240.804 people registered unemployed on a seasonally-adjusted basis, according to statistics released today.

This represents 4.08 per cent of the estimated labour force.

The figures, released by the Minister for Labour and Immigration (Mr Clyde Cameron) show a rise of 13.8 per cent over November. They include end-of-year school leavers and a further increase in the number of unemployed could be expected next month, Mr Cameron said. The actual number of Australians unemployed is 266.988 — an increase of 26,000 over the previous month.

The statistics show that unemployment is more pronounced in metropolitan areas than in country centres and was more marked for females.

' Mr Cameron said, however, ; that the Federal GovernI ment’s expansionary econJomic measures were beginning to have a positive imipact on the building and

finance sectors which pointed to a stabilisation of the employment situation in the second quarter of 1975.

He said that the success of these measures would largely depend on the extent to which unions and employers exercised restraint on wages and prices. Mr Cameron said that while Australia had a system that could be manipulated by giant multi-national corporations, it had to be expected that employment I would fall whenever wage costs reduced profits to I levels which were unacceptable to foreign board rooms. Soon after the unemploy- . ment statistics were II eleased, the Deputy Leader |of the Opposition (Mr Phillip Lynch) called for Mr Cameron’s resignation.

Mr Lynch described the unemployment situation as “the most debilitating social tragedy Australia has faced since the Great Depression.