Australia Economic Progress Report | Study

Australia Economic Progress
Report
Current Event
 Outbreak of novel coronavirus has shook the world majorly in the aspect
of health and then socially and economically. Every country is imposing
lockdown to contain the spread of the virus. People have been asked to
self-quarantine. This has caused adverse impacts to major economies
including Australia.
 The imposition of lockdown is the necessary step but due to that main
three factors on which the economic growth of a country depends are
private sector investment, household consumption and government
spending are adversely affected (Butler 2020). Due to restriction in going
outside the consumption in all the sector has decreased.
 The companies that are involved in manufacturing of goods and providing
services are highly impacted. Owing to the outbreak of the virus the
companies have been forced to stop their regular operation. For example
Qantas is working with 10000 employees of its total 30000 employees.
 Lower consumption will impact the aggregate demand of the country. Fall
in business affects the business confidence and thereby there will be fall
investment (Jericho 2020). Hence, there will be fall in supply in the
economy and thus aggregate supply declines too. The double pressure
due to fall in the aggregate demand and aggregate supply would lower the
economic output of the country.
 Coronavirus impacts the people of the country who are actually the drivers
of all the economic factors that impacts the overall economy of the
country. Therefore, it is obvious that coronavirus is pushing the economy
of Australia towards an inevitable economic slowdown.
GDP Highlights
Figure 1: GDP
Source: (Created by the Author)

 The GDP of Australia grew over the years if the economy of the country is
considered from first quarter of 1970 to first quarter of 1994. The growth
that the economy faced is not without bad patches. During the early
1970’s the economy of Australia went through stagflation which had
occurred due to crisis of oil and increasing export competition. After it
recession occurred in 1974 which lasted till 1975.
 The Australian economy faced another recession in the early 1980’s due
to the economic unrest occurred due to labour movements. The condition
was controlled by introduction of several economic reforms and
privatisation of many government organizations occurred starting 1983
(Chen, Pateman and Sakalayen 2017).
 The phase between 1970 and 1994 was mostly dominated by the negative
economic aspects. The privatisation of Commonwealth Bank and Qantas
and many other important organization had generated economic distrust
causing recession in the country (Aulich, Jones and Head 2018).
Labour Market Highlights
Figure 2: Sector wise employment in Australia
Source: (Created by the Author)
 Employment rate wise Australia is one of the successful country in the
world. There are various sector in the country that contributes and help
the country to achieve employment rate (Kifle, Kler and Shankar 2019).
The total employment in the country is about 1.29 million. In figure 2, the
change in different employment sector in the country for last ten years is
shown.
 From the above figure it is evident that Arts and Recreation services
always been employing the lowest number of workers and the trend is