Industry upturn in 2002

In the last week, the already depressed Australian electronics industry has been further hit by job losses across the country.

Despite calls to invest in ICT industries, confirmed jobs to go include the loss of 320 jobs in Alcatel's Port Botany plant in Sydney, and around 30 staff at Computer Associates Australia. Yet to be determined job cuts are to occur at Sun Microsystems Australia (3900 people to go worldwide), and Motorola (7000 people to go worldwide).

This news comes as the ICT sector was found to contribute strongly to the 1990s surge in Australia's productivity despite the end of the dot.com boom. In fact, the Productivity Commission's report, Information Technology and Australia's Productivity Surge, found Australia received an ICT boost at least as strong as that recorded in the US.

"Australia has been very quick on the uptake of ICTs by international standards," the report said. "While ICT production added up to 0.3 of a percentage point to US productivity growth, Australia generated a productivity improvement of 1.1 percentage points from ICT use and other factors." These other factors included the benefits of microeconomic policy reforms last decade, principally in encouraging competition, it said.

With the industry not predicted an upturn until after the first quarter of 2002, cuts in Sun Microsystems and Motorola's Australian workforces is to be expected, as are further cuts in local electronics firms over the remainder of 2001.