Find out the bigger story behind the scenes of this week's news. 

The front page of The West Australian on Tuesday was all about the big business paying to poll WA voters so the Liberals could argue over who gets the job of Premier of WA.

"Lib Debacle" The West Australians 23/8/16, pg 1

Two days later there was a much bigger story but you had to turn to page six to find it - the latest ABS stats on jobs and unemployment.  

Here it is if you missed it.  

"Unemployment malaise" The West Australian 25/8/16, pg 6

Unemployment is rising in WA, at different rates in different locations. The news from the Reachtel polling leaked by business, is that there is a swing in voting against the Liberals in WA, but again, at different rates in different locations.

There's a real message here about jobs in general, not just the Premier's.

We've done the work comparing the latest jobs data with the latest poll results for the north-western suburbs of Perth.

So while the big news for Colin Barnett on Tuesday was the poll about him probably losing his job, the big news for West Australians in the northern suburbs was the release by the Australians Bureau of Statistics (ABS) of local level data on unemployment.  

This is our headline:

"North West Perth Youth unemployment now at 14.9%"

Or maybe this one...

"North West Perth overall unemployment rate increased from 4.1% to 5.7% over three years"

So how much do the people of these suburbs care about jobs and the state of affairs? 

ABS North West Perth Metropolitan area

This is where the opinion poll headline is worth a closer look.

Within the north-western suburbs of Perth are five key marginal seats currently held by the Liberals: Joondalup, Wanneroo, Balcatta, Morley and Mt Lawley.

Here is the chart for those seats showing the 2013 state election results. See those grey bars? Those the results predicted by Reachtel after polling over 10,000 WA voters leaked this week.

Now check out the chart of youth and general unemployment rates for the north-western Perth:

Of course a correlation between rising unemployment and falling votes for the Liberal government, doesn't prove one causes the other.  But commonsense does suggest a link.

Maybe if Colin Barnett was as concerned with creating jobs for West Australians, he wouldn't have to be so worried about keeping his. 

Want to know more about local jobs and skills?  Check out the local jobs and skills reports at Save Our Services here.

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