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One third of Accommodation & food services jobs lost

Released
5/05/2020

The Accommodation and food services industry continued to be the most impacted by COVID-19, with a drop of around one in three paid jobs in the industry from mid-March to mid-April, according to new data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics today.

The Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia estimates also showed that between 14 March and 18 April (the five weeks after Australia recorded its 100th confirmed COVID-19 case) total employee jobs decreased by 7.5%, while total wages paid by employers decreased by 8.2%.

Head of Labour Statistics at the ABS, Bjorn Jarvis, said: “The industries which lost the most jobs continued to be Accommodation and food services (-33.4%) and Arts and recreation services (-27.0%).

“Job losses in Accommodation and food services were greatest in South Australia (-39.7%) and Victoria (-35.6%).

“The new data shows that jobs in Accommodation and food services worked by people aged 20-29 and people over 70 decreased the most (-40.8% and -43.7%).”

“Looking at the week-to-week changes, the decrease in the number of jobs in the week ending 18 April was 1.5%, which was larger than the 0.3% decrease in week ending 11 April 2020,” Mr Jarvis said.

Further information is available in Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia (cat. no. 6160.0.55.001).

The ABS would like to acknowledge the continued support from the Australian Taxation Office in enabling the ABS to produce these statistics, providing weekly insights into the Australian labour market.

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