Unemployment, Inflation and Job Creation Policies in Australia

Before the economic upheavals of the early 1970s it was quite acceptable to think of a natural rate of unemployment in Australia of somewhere between 1.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent without being too precise about what exactly was meant by the concept. This unemployment range encompassed the average unemployment rate around which the economy could be expected to fluctuate, the estimates of the natural rate of unemployment derived from the Phillips curve and even the ‘full employment’ level of unemployment.