Coronavirus crisis bites: Concerning survey reveals anxiety rates have DOUBLED while 45% of Australians have taken a financial hit
- Australian Bureau of Statistics: COVID-19 affected half the population's finances
- Anxiety levels have also doubled compared with a similar health survey of 2017
- Older Australians over 65 are less anxious despite being bigger COVID-19 risk
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Coronavirus is affecting the finances of almost half the Australian population and causing anxiety levels to double.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released its first comprehensive survey of how COVID-19 is depleting bank balances and sparking a potential mental health crisis.
The worst global health pandemic in 100 years is threatening to push unemployment into the double digits for the first time since the early 1990s.
With many hospitality and retail workers now jobless as others take pay cuts, the ABS found 45 per cent of Australians had been affected financially in the four weeks to April 17.
Coronavirus is threatening to push unemployment into the double digits for the first time since the early 1990s, with 31 per cent of people telling the Australian Bureau of Statistics they were worse off financially. Pictured is a Centrelink queue in Melbourne
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One third, or 31 per cent of respondents told the ABS their finances had worsened while 14 per cent had reported an improvement.
The bad news about COVID-19 during that period also caused anxiety levels to double when compared with the federal government agency's 2017-18 National Health Survey.
Michelle Marquardt, the ABS's program manager for household surveys, said that compared with three years ago, 'twice as many adults reported feelings associated with anxiety, such as nervousness or restlessness, at least some of the time over the last four weeks'.
Despite being more likely to die, older Australians were the ones less likely to be anxious.
'Adults aged 18 to 64 years were nearly twice as likely as those aged 65 years and over to experience feelings related to anxiety at least some of the time,' Ms Marquardt said.
With daily new coronavirus case numbers now in the single digits, COVID-19 is shaping up more as an economic than a health crisis.
With many hospitality and retail workers now jobless as others take pay cuts, the ABS found 45 per cent of Australians had been affected financially in the four weeks to April 17, with 31 per cent being worse off. Pictured are police and army officers at Sydney International Airport
A separate survey of 1,444 people by market researcher Roy Morgan estimated 2.16million Australians were out of work in April, with unemployment now at 15.3 per cent, the highest since the 1930s Great Depression.
That is significantly higher than the 10 per cent jobless rate both the Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasury are expecting by the end of June.
Australia hasn't had double-digit unemployment since April 1994, as jobless rates remained high after the 1991 recession.
In March, the national jobless stood at 5.2 per cent before the March 24 shutdown of non-essential businesses, from pubs and clubs and to gyms and cinemas.
Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine said this had struck the Australian economy like a 'hammer blow', with the effects to be felt even as COVID-19 restrictions were unwound in May and June.
'Those most heavily impacted face a challenging employment market in the months ahead even as the harshest restrictions are rolled back,' she said.
The bad news about COVID-19 during that period also caused anxiety levels to double when compared with the Australian Bureau of Statistics's 2017-18 National Health Survey. Pictured is a man begging for money in Sydney
