Greater Sydney’s extended lockdown has cost the state economy over 10,000 jobs a day, based on the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) analysis of the latest data. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed on Thursday that during the fortnight to July 17, the number of payroll jobs fell 2.4 percent across the nation. However, New South Wales was the hardest hit, losing 4.4 percent of its jobs. The state usually accounts for almost a third of all jobs in the country, so the lockdown strongly contributed to the national fall in jobs. Based on these figures, IPA found that around 214,400 jobs disappeared from the start of the Sydney lockdown (June 26) to July 17—or 10,200 per day. “This means that every single job restored across the 2020-21 financial year were wiped out in just four weeks,” IPA research fellow Cian Hussey said. The ABS found that the accommodation …