The Australian economy officially shed 53,700 part-time jobs in December and suffered a net loss of 100 jobs during the course of 2011, marking a turning point as corporate restructuring and job shedding accelerates. The 2011 contraction was the first since the recession of the early 1990s, when official unemployment rose to 9 percent.

Almost 40,000 jobs were eliminated in the final two months of 2011, the biggest two-month fall in more than a decade. In the year to November, almost 44,000 jobs disappeared in manufacturing, and more than 28,000 in retailing. Claims of a ‘recovery’ in 2010, when the employment total rose after the 2008-09 global crisis, have given way to warnings of deteriorating conditions and evaporating business and consumer confidence.