JobKeeper assessment: Treasury report released

Treasury has released the Independent Evaluation of the JobKeeper Payment Final Report. The report considers both the impact and processes of JobKeeper. The evaluation assesses the effectiveness of JobKeeper in achieving its objectives, and records lessons learned from the design and implementation of JobKeeper, with a view to informing future policy responses.

JobKeeper was a central pillar of the policy response in Australia to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a wage subsidy and income support program announced on 30 March 2020, as the third instalment in a series of economic support packages introduced in the space of three weeks. Modifications to policy design, including changes to eligibility criteria and the payment rate and structure, were made following a three-month review. JobKeeper remained in place until 28 March 2021.

The report finds that JobKeeper provided certainty during a crisis, and its take-up was high. It provided support to around four million employees – almost one-third of Australia’s pre-pandemic employment population – and around one million businesses. Credible estimates suggest that JobKeeper preserved between roughly 300,000 and 800,000 jobs.

With a total cost of $88.8 billion, JobKeeper was the one of the largest fiscal and labour market interventions in Australia’s history. The initial six months of the program cost approximately $70 billion. The first and second three-month extensions cost around $13 billion and $6 billion respectively.

JobKeeper was implemented with incredible speed and was well managed, the report finds. The incidence of fraud was low, and in particular lower than for other ATO-administered programs and taxes such as the cashflow boost, GST tax receipts and large corporate groups income tax.

However, the report says, narrow recipient eligibility and exclusions reduced the effectiveness of JobKeeper and had negative economic consequences.

Exclusions based on employee characteristics such as being a short-term casual or temporary migrant worker compromised the efficacy of JobKeeper and “led to worse outcomes”. In particular, the exclusion of short-term migrants from JobKeeper likely reduced the productive capacity of the Australian economy and constrained recovery in some sectors.

The report states that transparency requirements should be built into policy design to “build public trust and enable appropriate scrutiny of public expenditures”. JobKeeper did not include in its design a public registry or disclosure requirement for entities that received the payment.

JobKeeper was a policy designed for an extraordinary situation. While it was justified during the pandemic, such a policy should be reserved for a macroeconomic crisis and is not appropriate for industry or region-specific shocks or downturns in Australia, the report says.

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