JobSeeker payment falls to 68 per cent of Age Pension as cost of living bites: ‘Woefully low’
Major welfare payments will rise next month, at a cost of $4 billion to the federal budget. But advocates are calling for more.
Advocates are again calling for the Jobseeker payment, and related welfare support, to be increased as new analysis shows it falling behind major safety net programs like the Age Pension.
In the 1970s, JobSeeker and the Pension were paid at the same rate, the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), said. But new analysis from the group shows how much things have changed.
The payment to unemployed Aussies has fallen to account for just 68 per cent of the Age Pension amount, it said.
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As a result, a person aged 67 who is eligible for the Age Pension receives $600 a week but a 65-year-old, for example, who loses their job receives just $409 a week to cover the same basic living costs.
“There is no reason one of them should be living on $191 a week less than the other,” ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie said.
In the late 1990s, the Howard government legislated that the pension be benchmarked to a certain level of average weekly earnings, but did not extend the mechanism to unemployment benefits.
Today, the pension is 60 per cent of the minimum wage while JobSeeker is just 40.6 per cent, ACOSS noted.
“People who receive JobSeeker are skipping meals and forgoing essential medications just to keep a roof over their heads,” Goldie said.
“We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world yet successive governments choose to keep 3.7 million people living in poverty. We know how to fix this problem, we just need politicians to act.”
MORE:New JobSeeker rules as changes to employment system announced
The government’s own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has recommended a substantial increase to the JobSeeker payment for years.
Ben Phillips, associate professor at ANU Centre for Social Policy Research and member of the Committee told Yahoo Financearound the time of the federal budget thatlifting the unemployment benefit was the “most important change” the government could have made to address cost-of-living pressures.
Around 900,000 Aussies currently receive JobSeeker, with the current rate set to be indexed higher next month, increasing slightly by $16.20 to $833.70 a fortnight.
Payments to rise next month, but deeming rates will clip asset-rich pensioners
At the same time, the government will revise upwards the social security deeming rates used to estimate how much income an individual’s financial assets would earn as part of the income test. They were previously frozen at lows during the pandemic and increased for the first time in years in September last year, before being revised upwards again in March this year.
