If you all want to tackle the root cause of under employment look at the debt.

We used to have 4 State Govt banks and the Commonwealth Govt bank.With the fractional reserve system of banking they could have $10 worth of deposits and create from nothing $100 worth of loans.Over the life of the loan the banks make more money than the principal.The banks get to keep the interest but the created principal gets written off the books and does not enter the real economy because it would create too much inflation.

These Govt bank's profits were used to help keep our taxes low but now our Govt has to borrow from OS banks who just create it from nothing and we have to pay more taxes to service the debt.Hence there is less money,less infrstructure thus less jobs in our economy but a lot more debt.John Howard was no great economist he had the luck of an enormous mining boom.

Even our inflationary money gets created as debt.Why is this so bad? Well that inflationary money represents the depreciation of your toil.It is a very cunning tax by the banking system that creates the depreciated value of your hard earned dollar again as debt.

The way forward is to put pressure on our Govt to get the Reserve Bank of Australia to create at least the inflationary of 3% of GDP and loan to to our private banks who just borrow it from OS banks anyway.This will save us $36 billion pa + interest in taxes.It will not harm our private banks or their shares.Infact it will make them better off because the money stays here.30% of our mortgage money comes from OS banks.

This private fractional reserve system of banking is an absolute rort.It is socialism for the super rich.They own you by virtue of creating from nothing the money to equal your toil.

Nothing will change unless this unfair system is addressed.http://www.themoneymasters.com/ 'How the banks create 90% of the world'smoney.'

I am afraid this article, and this thread, has missed the key point in the whole measurement of unemployed issue. If anyone with a working partner loses their job then they are not eligible for any centrelink payment so there is no mechanism for them being recorded as unemployed. They could be fronting up to employment agencies every week but they will not be recorded in any official stats. Male or female, they will simply slip into the ranks of "home duties" until they find another job.

The same applies to students starting work. My son spent 6 months seeking work after Uni but did not show up in the stats until he turned 21 and was eligible for jobstart.

So the under reporting of the unemployment rate is not just an issue of definitions. It is a matter of data integrity and willful misrepresentation of the facts. And every mortgage payer in the country is paying at least 2% in extra interest on their loans because of our seriously corrupted unemployment stats.

Lance Boyle

The ABS labour force data have nothing to do with the count of benefit recipients. They are derived from surveys of a sample of household the ABS conducts each month. You are right than many unemployed people are not entitled to benefits. Also, some people entitled to benefits are not counted by the ABS as unemployed – for example, people who are not actively looking for work.

The two measures are quite different and not connected.