JobKeeper: The efficacy of Australia’s first short-time wage subsidy

Rebecca Cassells and Alan Duncan

Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), 2020, vol. 23, issue 2, 99-128

Abstract: The Australian JobKeeper wage subsidy is an unprecedented public policy response to a once in a century health and economic crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus of this paper is on the efficacy of the Australian JobKeeper program design, including how well it meets its overall objective of retaining employer-employee matches; how well it is targeted relative to the needs of both businesses and workers; and the adequacy of JobKeeper as a wage replacement scheme. We consider both the original JobKeeper design, JobKeeper 2.0 and a series of alternative wage subsidy designs that we believe would more effectively target both employers and workers, incentivise a reallocation of labour and support a faster economic recovery.

Keywords: JobKeeper; wage subsidy; COVID-19 economic crisis; short-time wage subsidy; temporary wage subsidy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J33 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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