After "hitting the bottom", it looks like the worst of the COVID-19 recession is behind Tamworth with new jobs statistics showing local employment rates are almost back to normal after a horror 2020.
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That's according to the New England's Business NSW regional manager Joe Townsend.
New jobs figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in December show 60.9 per cent of residents in the New England region had a job in November.
As usual, more men are working than women, with 67.3 per cent of men working at least one hour a week in November. Just 54.7 per cent of all women were working, as a proportion of the total female population of the region.
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The jobs statistics are up 6.2 per cent on figures collected in October.
Mr Townsend said it's a good set of numbers.
"We might [have] hit the bottom of the unemployment trend. Hopefully from here it can be positive increases and we might recoup some of the 8000 jobs lost [to COVID-19]," he said.
In May, at the deepest point of the coronavirus recession, just 54.8 per cent of the Tamworth community was working, after many local businesses were ordered to close to halt the spread of the virus in March.
The local economy has started the slow recovery from the deep recession, Mr Townsend said.
But we've yet to return to the regional employment peak of 69.4 per cent reached in October 2019.
Our region is 0.9 per cent below the state average. Some 61.8 per cent of the population of NSW is employed.
Mr Townsend said the region is not yet out of recession but "we're coming out the back end of it".
"We're tracking along with NSW as a whole, which is really pleasing," he said.
"Whilst we've weathered it reasonably well there are others out there that have weathered it a bit better than us. Hopefully we'll be able to play catch-up in coming months."
He said the local tourism sector was unusually dependent on friends and relatives visiting from Victoria and Queensland, and had taken a battering as a result of this year's border lockdowns.
The key to helping drive recovery is "encouraging people to come and visit us", he said.
"We're not going to be able to market our region any better than through word of mouth. I encourage people to start promoting what we've got locally to do. Because everybody is out there at the moment, every region, every town is trying to attract more tourists. The only way we're going to penetrate through all that noise is if we collaborate and have a nice loud voice too."
The bureau's employment-to-population ratio statistic counts the number of jobs worked as a proportion of the total population, including children and retired people who don't work. But economists consider it a better measure to judge the impact of an economic downturn than the unemployment rate, because it doesn't exclude people who have given up looking for work.
The New England and North West statistical area covers Armidale, Tenterfield, Moree, Narrabri, Tamworth and Gunnedah.
Andrew Messenger
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
