Perth Voice Interactive

IN a sign of how deeply the end of WA’s mining boom is being felt, inner-city Perth suffered a 1.7 per cent rise in unemployment over the past year.

According to the federal employment department, Perth city started the year with a 5.8 per cent unemployment rate, close to the national average, but by January it had blown out to 7.5 per cent.

That tracks with rising office vacancy levels in the CBD, which earlier this week Deloitte Access Economics forecast would worsen.

“The office vacancy rate is already high and is set to get much worse over the next year as companies operating in the West strive to cut costs,” Deloitte director Chris Richardson said.

Despite his gloomy forecast, which included low expectations for a jobs recovery, WA’s overall unemployment rate appears to have stabilised at 6.1 per cent.

Senior economics lecturer at Murdoch University Anne Garnett says a big drop in commodity prices, particularly the floor falling out of iron ore, has been the culprit behind Perth’s pain.

“As WA supplies the majority of Australia’s iron ore exports, this has affected some mining operations significantly and they have been cutting costs by shedding labour.

“The real rate of unemployment is probably higher than the official statistics, as the participation rate has been falling in WA; it was 68.7 per cent in February 2015, and has dropped to 68.1 per cent in February 2016.

“This is a substantial drop and means that many people have given up looking for work and are no longer participating in the workforce.”

Over the same period that Perth’s unemployment rose, Stirling’s rose from 3.3 per cent to 4.5 per cent and Bayswater’s from 3.7 per cent to 4.6 per cent.

by STEVE GRANT