Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Alan McDonald: EMA Head of Advocacy, Finance and Strategy on unemployment

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Alan McDonald: EMA Head of Advocacy, Finance and Strategy on unemployment · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Unemployment up to a ten year high five point four percent,
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: up from five point three percent. Under usualization also climbing,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: now sitting at a five year high thirteen percent. Alan
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: McDonald is with the head of Advocacy, Finance and Strategy
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: at the AMA joining US this morning. Ellen, Good morning.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: What are your members seeing to you know, are they hiring?
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Are they sort of holding? What's going on?
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Probably holding, I think is the answer at the moment, Ryan,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: everybody wants everything to get better, and some of the
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: indicators are there, but I think they want to see
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: a few months or quarters strung together before they follow
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: through on some of those intentions to invest into hire.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: This is hard because it's checking and egg stuff. People
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: don't want to spend until they know the unemployment rates
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: coming down, but businesses don't want to hire until they
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: know people are going to spend.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bit of background to those numbers because
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: more people are looking, so that counts. But also you
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: get a little bump towards the end of the year
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: as people leave school and universities and things like that too.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: But some of the underlying more positive stuff says that
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: the hiring intentions are there in both the sort of
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: performance of manufacturing and Performance of Services index and their
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: long run ones. So we pay a lot of attention
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: to those, but I think you know that the recovery
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: has been coming. The recovery has been coming. Could we
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: wait and see some really solid evidence before we follow
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: through on some of those intentions?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Do you think one of the big I was listening
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: to an economist yesterday, one of the big problems is
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: that we had a sort of a false dawn, false
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: start last year. And you know, if this was if
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: we'd come straight out of a recession and this was
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the start of it, then perhaps we would be more confident.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: But because we got burnt last time, we're a bit
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: gun show.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a fair bit of that, and
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: even going back beyond last year, but I think if
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: you remember at the start of last year, it was
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: going to be thrive in twenty five and it became
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: survived in twenty five and the reality is a lot
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: of businesses died in twenty five. So yeah, that's what's
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: driving some of that caution.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: I think, is there anything that you, as the UMA
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: want done now tomorrow that would help get us out
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: of it?
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  Speaker 2: I don't think there's any sort of magic wave you
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: want in a way we go kind of approach. I
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: think a lot of the stuff we're seeing from some
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: of the policy things, they're getting things out of the way,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: They take time, and so when you get the cumulative
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: effect of all of those things coming through, then it's
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: not going to be a hockey stick, but I think
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: we'll start to see that slide up into recovery.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: If you like, we've just got to do the hard
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: yards and tough it out. Alan, appreciate you.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: That's a bit of a grind.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Appreciate your time as always, Ellen, Alan McDonald's EMA head
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of Edivacy, Finance and Strategy.
• 2:41
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• 2:44
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• 2:47
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