Bosses Axe Thousands of Jobs While Rates Squeeze the Rest

National Australia Bank will cut 2,500 jobs by the end of the financial year in October. Canva will cut or relocate more than 1,200 jobs, 22 per cent of its workforce. Woodside Energy will shed at least 500 jobs globally. David Jones has gone into voluntary administration. All of it landed within days, and none of the people losing their livelihoods got a vote on any of it.

Who Has the Power

The decisions came from boardrooms, and the explanations came wrapped in corporate fog. Canva co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins said "new technology is transforming what people can create" and "small changes won't be enough," without directly naming artificial intelligence. It was described as the company's first restructuring in 13 years. NAB blamed "challenging economic conditions, technological change, competition and a need to simplify its operating model." Simplify. That's the word for 2,500 people.

David Jones is a different flavour of the same story. The department store faced years of pressure from changing shopping habits, online competition and expensive property decisions. Those property decisions were made by people who won't be the ones standing in the unemployment queue. FTI Consulting, appointed by David Jones' lender Hilco last week, says foot traffic and sales at the stores and online have been at record levels and that the retailer "remains full operational." Record sales, and still the administrators arrive. The lender picks the consultants. The workers pick up the pieces.

Who Gets Crushed

The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts unemployment at 4.7 per cent in September, the highest in five years, since October 2021. Almost 40,000 people lost their jobs in September alone. That leaves 732,000 people unemployed nationwide. Behind each figure is a rent payment, a mortgage, a family.

Economists are calm about it. Robert Breunig, a public policy economist at the Australian National University, called the cuts significant, with "hundreds or even thousands of jobs" and "a large fraction of their workforce," but said "in terms of the number of overall jobs in the economy, it's still just a relatively small piece of the picture." A small piece of the picture, if you're not the piece. Robert Brooks, a professor at Monash University, said the market "has become slightly less resilient" but there isn't enough information to show it has started to crack.

Breunig's sharper worry is for the treasury: rising unemployment puts the government in a difficult position because it will pay more in income support and receive less tax revenue. The state's concern is the ledger.

What They're Calling "Order"

Now the Reserve Bank adds weight. In November it lifted rates from 4.6 per cent to 4.85 per cent, the highest in 18 years, since 2008. It was the fifth rise of the year. Governor Michele Bullock admitted it will "make people feel like it's a recession because they feel poorer," but said the bank "is not looking to tip the economy into a recession if we can avoid it." Six board members voted to raise rates. Three voted to leave them alone.

Read that again. People will feel poorer, by design, and more job losses are expected after the hike. The jobless rate averaged 4.63 per cent from July to September, up from 4.17 per cent between December and February, a 0.46-percentage-point rise that falls short of the Sahm rule threshold, which the RBA adjusts to 0.75 per cent for Australia. The threshold for official alarm keeps getting moved while 732,000 people wait.

Nobody in the source describes workers organizing their own response, and the bosses and the bank didn't ask. The cuts, the administration and the rate rise were all decided from above, and the bill goes to everyone below.