In the heart of Perth’s financial district, West Australians are returning to office buildings after months of quarantine.Prerna Mehta worked as a consultant for a professional services firm but lost her job two weeks ago.
“It’s a bit of a rollercoaster. I’m definitely not someone who wants to slow down at the moment, so I’m actively looking for a new job."Suzanne Worner runs Upbeat Events, an events company that works with local councils to create major street festivals in Perth.“No one is going to commission a 50,000-person street festival for some time. Essentially, our office has been derelict since the day we said 'put down your pens', and it's been a quiet place ever since,” she says.
“I remember it was Friday the 13th of March and it really just hit us that these events can’t go ahead. We basically said to our staff just to stop. A lot of them are artists and we had to tell them 'we won’t have the money to pay for you. This just isn’t going to happen'.” Social support organisations are now warning of a second unemployment wave due to the planned repeal of JobKeeper in September and more businesses realising they can’t survive long-term.
WACOSS says it is concerned that stigma associated with unemployment is preventing people from asking for help.“A lot of them are young families in those new housing development areas. A pile of them are getting JobKeeper now, but they’re using all of that to pay off the mortgage, and they’re having to go to charities to get food relief just to get by,” Mr Twomey says.
Her and many others.