"You might be wondering how many people are affected when unemployment ticks over by those apparently tiny decimal points. Well, my maths is imperfect but here’s a quick calculation. The Australian workforce was 13,753,200 in January, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. One per cent of those people is 137,532. To deploy a familiar measure, that amounts to a mass of humanity that would exceed the capacity of the Melbourne Cricket Ground by around 38,000 people. An unemployment rate of 3.5 per cent equates to maybe four MCGs’ worth of people.
So in January this year, roughly 27,500 extra people found themselves, by the arcane definitions formally deployed in this county, to be out of work, on top of the various MCG crowds already making do on their savings or the meagre largesse of the state. Or not making do at all, which is an increasing possibility.
The consolation – for families now struggling to make rent, or feed and clothe their children – is that this is all part of the plan. “As economic growth slows, unemployment is expected to increase.”" https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/jonathan-green/2023/02/16/rate-expectations
