Commentary In recent weeks, some have commented that it feels like Australia is back in March 2020. A year and a half have passed, and we have learned much about the virus, but it often seems as though this has amounted to nothing. And that’s because it hasn’t. New data released from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Aug. 5 confirms this. According to the data, the total number of private sector jobs in Australia in mid-July was just 1.3 percent above the March 14 benchmark last year when the 100th case of COVID was recorded. There is a slight time lag in the data, but with the Greater Sydney lockdown extended into August and spreading into other areas of New South Wales (NSW), it is likely that the number of private sector jobs has now shrunk back to pre-pandemic levels. In NSW itself, 214,400 jobs were destroyed in …