MORE THAN HALF A MILLION FULL-TIME JOBS CREATED UNDER ALBANESE LABOR GOVERNMENT

Close to 880,000 jobs have been created since the Albanese Labor Government came to office – and more than half a million of them have been full-time jobs.

Today’s ABS Labour Force figures show unemployment remains at near historic lows, falling to 4.0 per cent.

Under the previous government unemployment averaged 5.6 per cent.

Encouragingly, full-time employment is at a record high, rising strongly by more than 40,000.

It took the previous government five years to reach half a million new full-time jobs, the Albanese Labor Government has done it in two years.

More jobs have been created under this Government than any other first term government on record.

While our labour market has been resilient, our economy has weakened substantially as a result of higher interest rates, persistent inflation and ongoing global uncertainty.

People are under pressure and that’s why our Budget is all about fighting inflation and easing the cost of living with tax cuts for every taxpayer and energy rebates for every household and for a million small businesses.

Despite the challenges we confront, inflation is moderating, real wages are growing and our labour market remains one of our greatest strengths.

Our labour market has outperformed major advanced economies with a higher participation rate and stronger employment growth since we came to government.

The Albanese Labor Government wants Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn.

Australians are earning more because we’ve changed workplace laws to get wages moving again.

And on July 1 they’ll keep more of what they earn because of Labor’s tax cut.

Peter Dutton wants Australians to work longer for less.

We know from recent leaked documents that Peter Dutton and the Liberals have a secret blueprint to cut wages and rip rights away from Australian workers.

This includes plans to make it easier to sack people, remove award protections for workers and tear up the Better Off Overall Test.

It comes on top of Peter Dutton and the Liberals’ promise for a targeted package of workplace relations repeals to take to the next election – including scrapping the right to disconnect and ripping rights away from casuals.

ENDS