Adelaide in ICU as economy and jobs collapse

Adelaide's young people have suffered the largest increases in unemployment - and the biggest falls in jobs - since the pandemic started.In June 2020, the jobless rate nationally for 20-24 year old job seekers soared to 13.9 per cent. In SA, it is closer to 40 per cent. At every opportunity, I have advised them to leave SA (not easy now with the Covid-19 restrictions).

They have watched as the Boomers were showered with senior payments, indexed against average male earnings, tax exemptions on the family home and superannuation tax breaks. Today, less than half of 25-34-year-olds own their own home, compared with 61 per cent back in 1981, according to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

Many are taking shelter by studying in the state's three publicly funded universities, which are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. There is a massive 'disconnect' between university enrolments and the local job market.

A few years ago, before the pandemic, Commonwealth Department of Education and Training figures stated there were 11,895 domestic bachelor degree graduates from Adelaide's three major universities. Including postgraduate awardees, this figure rises to a whopping 19,680 graduates.

There is also a staggeringly high dropout rate of 15-30 per cent. Adelaide employers are hiring graduates to perform basic tasks that Year 12 students could do blindfolded. Even before the virus, flat population growth and an exodus of young people, had blighted the state's public university sector. Politicians want to merge two of the three universities. They're 20 years too late.

When systems wind down in such a catastrophic fashion over 40 years, there are no solutions. The brain drain has created a sheltered-workshop economy.

The City of Churches is a paradigm example of what happens when political, academic and business leaders, fail to act. When learned helplessness becomes the operating economic philosophy.