The Federal Government has announced that childcare workers will lose access to JobKeeper on July 20. Two months earlier than the original cut-off.
No other sector has so far been identified by the Government as losing JobKeeper earlier than the September 27 cut-off.
Why the Federal Government should choose the childcare sector as the first to prematurely lose the JobKeeper wage subsidy is rather perplexing.
Of any sector, it is one of the most female dominated.
“A lot more women have either lost jobs or lost hours than men and I would’ve thought that involvement in early childhood was one of the best things Government could do to protect jobs for women,” Early Childhood Australia chief executive Sam Page told the ABC.
“Both to support women who are relying on childcare to get back to work, but also to support nearly 200,000 who work in this sector, of which 97 per cent are women.”
Nor would it be missed to the childcare sector that its early exit from the $70 billion wage subsidy scheme was announced just five days after the Government allocated a $688 million stimulus to the construction sector.
Deloitte Access economist Chris Richardson said the recession had been a tale of two sexes.
“This recession is changing shape. It began as something that affected women more, but it’s starting to even up,” Richardson said.
“The news is starting to become better for women as their sectors open up and worse for men as their sectors – construction and to a lesser extent manufacturing – start to run low on their pipeline of work.”
