One in three Australians reported a deterioration in household finances in the month to mid-April, an official survey showed on Friday, as the COVID-19 pandemic shut businesses and forced many people into the unemployment queue.
FILE PHOTO: People practising varying degrees of social distancing wait in line to pick up orders from a fish market, as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues, in Sydney, Australia, April 30, 2020. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
The survey highlights the challenges facing policymakers who have gone all in to blunt the economic shock from the containment measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. In the ABS survey, about 8% of respondents said they lacked the money to pay one or more bills on time and 10% of households drew on their savings to pay for basic living expenses - the most common response to coping with financial stress.More than a third of Australians have a mortgage, suggesting that almost 10% of them could have reduced their repayments, analysts at National Australia Bank said in a note.
The number of unemployment benefit recipients surged from 0.8 million at the end of 2019 to 1.3 million by April 24, with most of the increase seen from the second half of March when containment measures were tightened.
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