Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is optimistic about the outlook for employment after new Treasury analysis estimated more than half of the people who were stood down at the start of the coronavirus pandemic are back in work.
The July labour force report released earlier in August showed 340,000 jobs were created in the past two months.
But Treasury says taking into account those employed but working zero hours, it estimates the increase in effective employment has been even greater, with 689,000 additional people back to work since April.
Of the 1.3 million Australians who lost their job or were stood down on zero hours at the start of the crisis, more than half had already started some form of work by July.
That brought the national effective unemployment rate down to 9.9 per cent in July after peaking at 14.9 per cent in April.
"We know the road to recovery will be bumpy as we have seen with the setback in Victoria," Mr Frydenberg said.
"However, the jobs recovery across the rest of the country gives cause for optimism that through containing the spread of the virus and reopening the economy we will get through this."
He said the government's recently announced JobMaker plan was designed to rebuild the economy and included a $1 billion JobTrainer fund to help create 340,700 new training places and a further $1.5 billion in support for small and medium businesses to retain their apprentices.
But not everyone is feelings as optimistic.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg speaks to the media during an announcement in Melbourne. Source: AAP
Bosses who hold the company purse strings have seen their uncertainty about the economic outlook pushed to new highs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet a new survey of chief financial officers also found just more than half remain optimistic about the future.
The twice-yearly Deloitte CFO Sentiment survey found uncertainty about economic conditions has reached a record-high 92 per cent, up from 72 per cent six months earlier.
More than three-quarters of respondents see some sort of revenue decrease in the second half of 2020 and nearly three in five expect revenues to be lower than their pre-pandemic expectations in 2021.
“A COVID-induced global economic downturn, the largest since the Great Depression, has hit hard, net optimism has fallen drastically, and uncertainty is at an all-time high,” Deloitte partner Stephen Gustafson said on Monday.
Still, 53 per cent remain optimistic about the future.
“While many see business conditions as worse than six months ago, they’re also not pulling down the shutters,” Mr Gustafson said.
“Encouragingly for Australia CFOs appear to be up for the recovery fight. The challenges are clearly numerous and far-reaching but more than half are optimistic, or even highly optimistic about the future.”
CFOs see navigating uncertainty, accelerated transformation and cutting costs out of operating margins as the main issues they need to deal with to make it through the crisis.
