May 3rd: antidote to uranium lobby’s lies about EMPLOYMENT
AUSTRALIA’S URANIUM EXPORT REVENUE IN PERSPECTIVE YELLOWCAKE FEVER Exposing the Uranium Industry’s Economic Myths , Australian Conservation Foundation “…..IBISWorld’s market report (March 2013) states there are just 650 jobs across Australia in uranium mining. In May 2006, the federal Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources estimated “over 700 jobs” in uranium mining and in October 2007 the Department’sestimate was “over 800 jobs”. The World Nuclear Association puts the figure at 1,760 jobs (1,200 in mining, 500 in exploration and 60 in regulation).
Even the higher World Nuclear Association figure represents just 0.015% of all jobs in Australia2 and considerably less than 1% of jobs in mining, oil and gas operations (while all mining accounts for about 2% of the total workforce). Prime Minister Julia Gillard puts the figure at “over 4,200 jobs” in uranium mining in Australia – presumably using a 1,400 x 3 multiplier for indirect jobs. Yet Dr David Gruen from the Macroeconomic Group at Treasury states that “with unemployment close to its lowest sustainable rate, it is not the case that individual industries are creating jobs, they are simply re-distributing them … there really isn’t a multiplier’’.
Inflated claims and estimates of uranium employment are neither new nor the domain of one political party. In 1988, Labor MHR Gordon Bilney claimed that the unfettered expansion of the uranium industry would generate 250,000 new jobs. In 2012, Premier Campbell Newman stated the industry would generate “thousands of jobs” in Queensland despite not having any economic analysis to justify this implausible claim.
The Australian Uranium Association claims the industry is a “significant employer of First Australians, with some workforces comprising up to 15 per cent indigenous employees.” In order to better reflect the Indigenous employment variance between projects, if we apply a 5% discount rate to the Association’s claim and assume that Indigenous people comprise 10% of the uranium workforce (still a generous estimate), and if we take the highest of the available estimates of total employment (1,760), that amounts to 176 jobs or roughly one job for every 3,000 Indigenous Australians – hardly a fast track to closing the gap. And this is before Dr Gruen’s point about redistribution is considered in the employment equation…. http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resources/ACF_Yellowcake_Fever.pdf
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1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
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