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Unlucky for some

Eleanor Whitehead: Australia and New Zealand correspondent, The Economist, SYDNEY

The fallout from Australia’s first slump in 28 years

AUSTRALIA WILL be down on its famous luck in 2021. Its unbeaten run of recent
economic growth—a record 28 years without a recession—made its people, on average,
the second-wealthiest in the world. But the pandemic has brought that stretch to an
unexpected end. As the country claws its way out of recession, Australians face a
punishing year.

The government expects an unemployment rate of 8% as the new year dawns. By March,
a wage-subsidy scheme, which has helped preserve 3.5m jobs, is due to dry up. Australia
has closed its international borders in an effort to keep out the coronavirus, locking out
the immigrants who normally help power its economy.

This sets the stage for a debate about the prosperity that has come so easily to Australia
for so long. China has recently been the source of most of it. It gobbles up more of what
Australia produces than any other country: almost 40% of its exported goods, in all.
China is also the biggest supplier of tourists—1.4m of them in 2019—and foreign fee-
paying students, accounting for 13% of all enrolments at Australia’s largest universities.