An economic downturn should be no excuse to lose the ground we have already won in reducing the number of jobless Australian families.

Despite Australia coming off the back of a remarkable economic boom and enjoying historically low unemployment rates, in late 2008 almost one in eight Australian children lived in a family where no parent worked. Unbelievably, this figure is actually a marked improvement: family joblessness reached its peak in the mid 1990s when more than one in six children lived in jobless households.

Despite this improvement, the statistics on family joblessness paint a depressing picture.  Australia has the second highest proportion of jobless families in the OECD.  This represents a considerable social and economic cost to Australia, but the biggest cost is borne by the children of jobless parents, who are significantly disadvantaged relative to their peers.   The personal cost to these children, who grow up without the positive influence of a working parent to teach them about responsibility and discipline, and instil them with a sense of ambition and self-determination, cannot be underestimated.

Family joblessness leads to welfare dependency and child poverty, and inferior health, social and developmental outcomes for children.  Consequently, there is a broad consensus that the high level of family joblessness in Australia is unacceptable.

The cost to the state of establishing permanently homeless people in homes may be less than the cost of leaving them on the streets. Most recently, a pilot program in Los Angeles has reported tentative success.