Projections made public by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer on Tuesday indicate that even with the rapid take-up of the JobKeeper program an estimated 10 per cent of the workforce will have lost their jobs.

The numbers also suggest that without JobKeeper the rate would have peaked at 15 per cent or more.

Australia has not experienced unemployment on this scale since the height of "the recession we had to have" in 1992, when joblessness briefly exceeded 12 per cent.

Back then, when the national population was 17.5 million, numerical unemployment topped out at just under 1 million people.

With more than 700,000 Australians expected to lose their jobs by the end of June as a result of the coronavirus crisis, unemployment is expected to reach 1.4 million just two months from now.

Up to 6 million more workers will be dependent on JobKeeper for the duration of the crisis.

This is the greatest economic shock Australia has experienced since the Great Depression.

Cataclysmic though these developments may be, they need to be viewed in the context that the local situation could have been far worse. When we compare our plight to what is happening around the world, we are better off than many other Western, industrialised, democracies.

Australia has been fortunate on several fronts and, to a large extent, has made its own luck.

Political, business, and labour leaders all deserve the credit for the speed with which the economic response has been drafted and is being rolled out.

While the Morrison government has taken the lead, it could not have achieved half as much without the unstinting help and support of state and territory governments.

The same is true of our public service, which has responded to calls for workers to repurpose themselves for new roles quickly and effectively.

Business leaders, meanwhile, stepped up in a wide range of ways. They have all contributed to what the PM and the Treasurer have characterised as a "Team Australia moment".

While the oft-repeated statement "we're all in this together" has become a well-worn cliche, that doesn't mean it isn't true.

Australians have demonstrated their understanding of this by willingly conforming to some of the most stringent restrictions on freedom of movement and business activity the nation has ever known.

This was directly responsible for the remarkable decline in the transmission rate which will, in time, significantly reduce the economic impact of the crisis on the country.

All of that said, it is still more than fair for Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese to highlight perceived deficiencies in the JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs, as he did yesterday.

Millions of people, including short-term casuals and many overseas workers, have missed out.

Not everybody who has been excluded from JobKeeper is going to be covered by JobSeeker, for example.

These are valid concerns and, given the country has breathing space that did not exist two weeks ago, can and should be addressed.

While, as the Treasurer said on Sunday, "you have to draw the line somewhere", that doesn't mean it makes sense to exclude millions of people who will have key roles to play in the coming recovery.