1/3 rd workforce temps, pt?

The official unemployment statistics in Australia have been systematically skewed to cover up the real extent of joblessness and the social crisis that it has given rise to. As a WSWS reporting team found this week, many of those without a job have simply been recategorized but continue to live on poverty-level welfare payments.

The latest survey carried out by the ABS, published on Thursday, reports that official unemployment fell in May from 5.4 percent to 5.2 percent. Seasonally adjusted, there are 11.56 million people working and 610,000 unemployed. The workforce participation rate dropped slightly from 65.2 percent of the population down to 65.1 percent.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd boasted: ?We [Australia] now have about half the unemployment level of the United States, half the unemployment rate of many countries in Europe.? Conveniently ignored by Rudd is the fact that hundreds of thousands of people who want and need full time jobs do not show up in the figures because the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is not able to classify them as unemployed.

The statistics mask a systemic social failure which leaves an entire layer of the population excluded from full time work and consigns them to a marginalised existence of part-time, casual or temporary work, or total dependence on the poverty-level allowances paid out by Centrelink?the state social security agency.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/unem-j12.shtml

The article is worth a read. It is a socialist website but the gist of the article rings true for me. I do think our employments stats are as strong as they appear to be. Jusy from my own experience and that of family, friends and neighbours.