Figures released last month show that job growth has slowed to a trickle.

Of concern especially for working carers is that full-time jobs are in sharp decline, disappearing at around 34,000 per month. This contrasts sharply with figures at the beginning of the year, when 13,000 new jobs per month were actually being created.

In April and May 2011 alone, more than 120,000 full-time jobs were lost and the swiftness in the deterioration of the labour market has taken analysts by surprise.

It does not seem likely that the federal government’s budget prediction of an extra 500,000 new jobs over two years will be achieved, according to financial analysts.

The only glimmer of a silver lining is that interest rates are likely to stay on hold for a little while longer.  BT Financial Group chief economist Chris Caton said in the Age newspaper that the case for an interest rate rise was now ‘close to non-existent’.

The latest figures show a trend rate of new job creation of just 1,800 per month – a rate which, if continued, would add a mere 43,200 jobs to the economy over two years, a mere fraction of the government’s original prediction of 500,000 and nowhere near enough to meet growth in the working age population.

Paradoxically, at the same time, rising fuel and food prices are fuelling global inflation and putting pressure on central banks such as the Reserve Bank of Australia to raise interest rates as they deal with a partly booming domestic economy – driven by the mining/resources sector.

It is a delicate balancing act that clearly favours those benefitting in some way from the mining boom – workers in the mining sector who are receiving very high wages, mining town communities, and companies, businesses and services associated with the mining sector in some way.

Meanwhile, many workers in jobs and industries not associated with mining continue to see an erosion of working conditions, pay and job opportunities.

This is what is being commonly referred to as Australia’s ‘two-tier economy’, which sees the rich getting richer and the poor falling further behind.