Sarah* lives in Victoria. She was unemployed for more than a year.

“Being without paid work was very, very hard. I’ve definitely struggled. Very isolating – I lost touch with friends because I couldn’t afford to do anything other than pay my rent.

It was a very difficult time.”

(Not their real name. Photo by Edgar Hernández on Unsplash. Representational only. Sarah is a survey respondent from ACOSS (2018): Voices of Unemployment.)