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1、EXECUTIVE SUMMARYAustralia is emerging from the pandemic sooner and at less economic cost than widely expected, but with higher unemployment and elevated debt. As the pandemic recedes, it is evident that global output and demand will recover slowly and unevenly. Major advanced economies have sharply
2、 increased government debt and their central banks have driven interest rates to rock bottom while buying big shares of additional government debt. At the same time, the US-China quarrel has become more intense, and Australias relationship with China has deteriorated. All these changed circumstances
3、, much amplified and extended from their pre-pandemic appearances, limit Australias choices.Image: Getty/JethuynhCanof doses. In the short term, however, the suspension of normal international passenger travel adds to Australias recorded GDP. In any one year there are many more Australians visiting
4、abroad than foreigners visiting Australia.11 Australian spending abroad is a minus in the national accounts, foreign spending in Australia a plus. If both inward and outward streams stop, as they have, Australia comes out ahead.Yet grave as the decline had beenf at its worst it was roughly a tenth o
5、feconoMic activity, and only for one Month.Between March and May 2020z Australia experienced what compared to previous downturns was an astonishingly swift decline in economic activity. Hours worked the best measure of the immediate employment response fell by a little more than 9 per cent between M
6、arch and April.12 The following month, the additional decline in work hours was less than 1 per cent, suggesting that even then the decline was already bottoming out.13 In June, the number of hours worked rose 4 per cent on May, signalling that output and employment were on the way up. Signalling a
7、slowdown in the jobs recovery, July hours worked rose only 1.3 per cent over June. Yet grave as the decline had been, at its worst it was roughly a tenth of economic activity, and only for one month. Even so, the number of hours worked in July 2020 was 5 per cent down on July the previous year, conf
8、irming that jobs and production had a way to go to return to pre-pandemic levels. The coronavirus flare-up in Melbourne and the restrictions to combat it will see more weakness in employment and hours worked over the next month or two, but the rebound in employment and hours worked will likely conti
9、nue in the rest of the economy.14Because there were 700 000 jobseekers even before the pandemic, because there are meanwhile new entrants looking for jobs, and because some big employment industries such as tourism will make a slow comeback, unemployment will increase even as output growth recovers.
10、In its 23 July Economic and Fiscal Update, Treasury pointed to “noticeable recovery in economic activity” already evident. It expected that the recovery would be underway from the September quarter, after a 7 per cent decline in GDP in the three months ending June 2020, compared to the previous quar
11、ter. Over the whole of 2020, Treasury forecast that the economy would contract by 3.75 per cent (compared to the whole of 2019), before growing by 2.5 per cent in 2021. In its 7 August update, which takes into account the setback in Melbourne, the RBA expects GDP to decline by 6 per cent comparing o
12、utput in the December quarter of 2020 to output in the December quarter of 2019, and then to expand by 5 per cent in the year to the December quarter of 2021. In this forecast the unemployment rate peaks at 10 per cent of the workforce by the end of 2020, and is still 9 per cent in the middle of 202
13、1J5As was already evident in the prime ministers National Press Club speech of 26 May, the government recognises unemployment as the biggest policy and political problem arising from the pandemic.THE PRE-COVID ECONOMYSelecting appropriate recovery policies is all the more difficult because the Austr
14、alian economy was not performing well before the pandemic. It raises the question of how much Australia should focus on structural5 changes that might remedy an underlying problem in the hope that faster long-term growth will reduce unemployment arising from the pandemic. Determining the scope and s
15、everity of that underperformance is an important part of designing the recovery plan.In the ten years to the end of 2019, the average incoME of Australians had increased More slowly than in anyten-year period in over half a century.Struck down by the pandemic, Australias celebrated record of almost
16、three decades of uninterrupted prosperity probably ended sometime in May 2020. In the 29 years prior, output had doubled, as had household income per head. After starting behind the United States and Japan in 1991, by 2018 Australian per capita income (measured in constant US dollars) exceeded both
17、and had drawn further ahead of Germany.16 Despite signs of fading economic success, by 2019 the average Australian commanded almost seven times the wealth of Australians thirty years earlier though distributed more unequally.However, by the time coronavirus arrived, the best of Australias long upswi
18、ng was over. In the ten years to the end of 2019, the average income of Australians had increased more slowly than in any ten-year period in over half a century.It was not that things were bad in the opening months of 2020. At 5.2 per cent, the unemployment rate was above the 4 per cent low reached
19、in early 2008, but well below the average of the entire long upswing, and also the average of the last ten years. Measured as average income per head, living standards were higher than ever.And while the slowdown was undeniable, it was evident that many problems that had troubled Australia in past d
20、ecades had diminished, or vanished. Australian policymakers had long been concerned about low national savings one of the reasons the country ran large and persistent deficits with the rest of the world. In 2019, to general amazement, Australia found itself not only with a substantial surplus of exp
21、orts over imports, but also with a current account surplus. It was the first current account surplus in nearly half a century. At not much less than a quarter of GDP, gross national savings was just below its post- GFC peak, but otherwise higher than it had been for thirty years. Economic problems t
22、hat had troubled generations of Australians had simply disappeared, unremarked.Nor did the economy show convincing symptoms of the sclerosis later discerned by the prime minister.17 Despite bushfires and floods, employment growth was firm. The number of jobs, the ratio of jobs to population, and the
23、 rate of participation in the workforce were all at or near record highs.18 Output had expanded by over 2 per cent in 2019 slower than the average of recent years, but very far from a recession. In February 2020, even as reports of a serious epidemic emerged, Australias share market reached a record
24、 high.It was certainly true that measured in current or nominal5 dollars, business investment as a share of GDP was back down to where it had been in 1991, when Australia was recovering from a deep recession. True also that productivity growth had slowed, that household debt had reached a new peak o
25、f 180 per cent of household disposable income, and that the division of national income had shifted more towards profit and away from wages.All true but also misleading. Current dollar business investment in 2019 was indeed the same share of GDP as in 1991. But this was only because the huge increas
26、e in export prices in those thirty years had inflated GDP but not investment. Removing inflation from both investment and GDP, business investment as a share of GDP was twice as high in 2019 as it had been in 1991 (Fig. 1A, following page). Excluding mining investment, real (or after-inflation) busi
27、ness investment in 2019 was at a record high (Fig. IB).There is no doubt about the rise in household debt, mostly to buy homes. It had indeed reached 180 per cent of household disposable income in 2019 a formidable number.19 But while household debt had never been higher, the interest rates paid on
28、it had never been lower,20 so the share of household income paid as interest on household debt was the same as in 2002. High household debt was not the reason for slow consumption growth. For its part, business debt in 2019 was lower compared to GDP than it had been ten years earlier. Australian gov
29、ernment debt had risen as a share of GDP, though by 2019 the increase had crested as deficits dwindled.21While the wages share of national income continued to decline (and the profit share to increase; a trend over decades), the decline was not as big as it appeared and probably did not show that ow
30、ners of capital were appropriating an unfair share of productivity growth.22 Much of the apparent change was due to the increased importance of the mining industry in Australian output in recent years.A, Business investment as a share of GDP4%Figure 1: Business investmentB. Business investment: Non-
31、miningSource: Australian Bureau of StatisticsA. Interest on household debt in proportion tohousehold income %Figure 2: Comparing household and business debtB. Business debt in proportion to GDP50% 6 4 裨裨产竟/耕Source Australian Bureau of StatisticsSince employment growth accelerated while output growth
32、 declined in the six years to 2019, it is evident that the principal cause of slowing growth in real incomes, wages, and output was declining growth in output per hour worked, or labour productivity. If we knew the reasons for this shift, we would already be well on the way to dealing with it, but w
33、e do not. As the Productivity Commission sensibly reported in early 2020, the slowdown is concerning but, uSuch high-level productivity measures rarely provide guidance to policy makers about specific problems to target产Figure 3: Wages and profit shares of factor income30% 60%Profits share (LHS) - W
34、ages share (RHS)Source: Australian Bureau of StatisticsWe do know that the recent slowdown in productivity growth began around 2012/13, that it is apparent in most advanced economies, and that the Australian slowdown is less marked than most.24 We know that it is not uniform across the Australian ec
35、onomy and that some industries such as mining, retail trade, recreation services, and administrative services in the market sector have seen quite strong increases in productivity, while others such as agriculture, construction, and the electricity, gas, and water utilities have not. It is evidently
36、 not an economy-wide problem.The causes of the productivity slowdown are unlikely to include the level or structure of tax in Australia, or the structure of industrial relations, both of which have the same shape today as they did in the decade before the slowdown. Nor does research and development
37、spending explain slower productivity growth. Though lower as a share of GDP than ten years earlier, research and development spending as a share of GDP in 2019 was nonetheless markedly higher than it had been in most of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when productivity growth was highe
38、r.25 There are no doubt improvements we can and should make in these areas, but they are unlikely to contribute much to productivity growth and particularly not in the next couple of years.Figure 4: Labour productivityREAL GDP (GVA) PER HOUR WORKED MARKET SECTOR85/75/小 小 国& 心 中 密。产产产武式式式武武科校校Source:
39、 Australian Bureau of StatisticsNor was the slowdown in GDP growth in the four or five years before the pandemic startlingly big. The difference in average annual growth between the seven years up to and including 2012 and the seven years up to and including 2019 was a little less than half a percen
40、tage point.26 This is well within the range of the usual business cycle fluctuations in output growth in a market economy. Sometimes an increase in demand in one major spending sector in an economy will offset the decline of another, a relay race often observed in Australias 29-year upswing. Sometim
41、es important categories turn down at the same time, though for different reasons and without suggesting an underlying failure. The simultaneous slowdown in business investment, home building, andhousehold consumption over the four years preceding the pandemic was to some extent an unfortunate conjun
42、ction rather than an indication of economic sclerosis.Since the econoMy is so farunencuMbered by Major financial failures, and the econoMic cessation in Australia brief and with no loss of work skills or capital equipMentf we should expect the recovery to continue.This interpretation of Australias e
43、conomic experience suggests that prior to the pandemic, Australia was not encountering a long-run economic problem. Unemployment and underemployment were troubling, but well down on the highs experienced earlier in the upswing, while the labour force participation rate was near a record high. Though
44、 business investment overall was flat for the last three years of the upswing, non-mining business investment had risen to a reasonably high share of real GDP compared to previously. Household consumption had fallen a little as a share of GDP, though it had increased as a share of household disposab
45、le income. Wages growth was slow, but was close to productivity growth. Inflation was persistently below the RBAs target band, but while that was a problem for the RBA as an institution, it was not of itself a problem for the economy. What is wrong, after all, with low inflation?Things could have be
46、en better, but there was nothing much wrong with the Australian economy in early 2020 that a relatively small upswing in investment and consumption, and a bit more productivity growth, would not have fixed. There are certainly ways to improve performance in many areas of the economy, including indus
47、trial relations, federal- state relations, workforce training, and health care funding and delivery. However, none of these reforms will have a significant impact on the major problem now facing Australia.The Australian economy is slowly returning to the output and employment levels it attained in 2
48、019. How soon it exceeds those levels and how quickly it then continues to grow depends on the skill and boldness of government and Reserve Bank actions, on the return of confidence to investment, on the pace with which the world economy picks up, and on the discovery and distribution of a vaccine o
49、r treatment that will permit unimpeded global travel. Since the economy is so far unencumbered by major financial failures, and the economic cessation in Australia brief and with no loss of work skills or capital equipment, we should expect the recovery to continue.While output growth will continue, unemployment will for a while increase. Australias last recession ended in the third quarter of 1991, but unemployment continue