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How Many Jobs is 23,510, Really? Recasting the Mining Job Loss Debate

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  • Bruce Chapman

    () (Crawford School of Economics & Government, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia)

  • Kiatanantha Lounkaew

    (Crawford School of Economics & Government, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia)

Abstract

It is commonplace in Australian policy debate for groups presumed to be adversely affected by proposed policies to provide estimates of the undesirable consequences of change. A fashionable form relates to predictions of job losses for the group affected, usually accompanied by counter-claims made by the government of the day or other groups in favour of the policy. A highly public example of the above is the claim by the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), based on work done in 2009 by Concept Economics (2009) that the then-planned Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) would result in 23,510 fewer jobs in Australian mining than would otherwise be the case. Our research reports on findings using three different data series and methods to put into context the supposed jobs loss figure. Our results should not be taken to mean that economic policy reform is costless to all employees who might be affected by sectoral changes in the labour market, and there remain clear roles for government to minimise the personal costs for those so disadvantaged. As well, the details of this research cannot be translated into precise analyses of the employment effects of the carbon price policy being developed by the current government. But the essential points concerning the size and meaning of mining sector employment effects should not be in dispute; the alleged "jobs losses" aspect of the climate change policy debate is not in any sense important to the overall discourse.

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File URL: http://ccep.anu.edu.au/data/2011/pdf/wpapers/CCEP1106Chapman.pdf
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Centre for Climate Economics & Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University in its series CCEP Working Papers with number 1106.

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Date of creation: Jul 2011
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Handle: RePEc:een:ccepwp:1106

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  1. Steve J. Davis & John Haltiwanger, 1991. "Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction and Employment Reallocation," NBER Working Papers 3728, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Timothy Dunne & John Haltiwanger & John Baldwin, 1994. "A Comparison of Job Creation and Job Destruction in Canada and the United States," Working Papers 94-2, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
  3. Natalia Ponomareva & Jeffrey Sheen, 2010. "Cyclical Flows in Australian Labour Markets," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 86(s1), pages 35-48, 09.
  4. Borland, Jeff, 1996. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in Manufacturing Industry in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 72(216), pages 46-62, March.
  5. Robert Dixon & John Freebairn & Guay Lim, 2005. "An Examination of Net Flows in the Australian Labour Market," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), The Centre for Labour Market Research (CLMR), Curtin Business School, vol. 8(1), pages 25-42, March.
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