House of Assembly Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2) 52 2 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Youth Unemployment YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT Mr MARSHALL House of Assembly Norwood Leader of the Opposition YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:26): My question is to the Premier. Why did the South Australian youth unemployment rate rise to 34 per cent in October? The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL House of Assembly Cheltenham Premier Minister for State Development Minister for the Public Sector Minister for the Arts YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:26): We continue to have this false debate over the importance of that statistic. We know that the overwhelming majority of young South Australians are either at school or earning—a very small proportion which is, generally speaking, very consistent with the overall unemployment rate, represented by the number of young people actually looking for work and not the total number of young people as a proportion of the state. This is a statistic which has become less and less meaningful as the retention rate in schools has increased dramatically. Remember, Mr Speaker, one of the reasons we are looking at relatively high youth unemployment rates is that the pool of people we are talking about who are not at school has shrunk dramatically. We are talking about, in absolute terms, very small numbers of South Australian young people who are unemployed in that age group. In fact, the school retention rate, when the Liberal Party was last in office, fell shamefully to around 67 per cent. It now sits at 89 per cent of South Australian school students to year 12. That is a 20 per cent turnaround. It is an extraordinary increase in a relatively short period of time. It is one of the great achievements of this Labor government. Of course, it dramatically reduces the pool of young people who are actually looking for work, so the absolute number of young people who are unemployed is a relatively small number.