Opposition treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers will give his budget reply address at the National Press Club in Canberra today.

He will say despite record levels of debt and spending, too many people would be left behind.

"The big numbers couldn't disguise a budget of such small ambitions," Dr Chalmers will say.

"The budget will be remembered only as Australia's most expensive missed opportunity."

The Morrison government announced $98 million of new spending measures in last Tuesday's budget including the $4 billion JobMaker hiring credit, which will give businesses a wage subsidy for every person under 35 they hire out of the dole queue.

The program is intended as a transition from the JobKeeper scheme, which is due to end in March.

However a new report has warned of the perils of rolling back COVID-19 support measures too soon.

The IMF's latest World Economic Outlook warned against the early withdrawal of economic lifelines like wage subsidies and boosted unemployment payments, as unemployment remains high.

"Premature scaling back of such lifelines... risks pushing the economy back into recession," it warned.

Unemployment is set to peak at 8 per cent in December, according to the latest Treasury estimates, down from the 10 per cent jobless rate expected when the pandemic first hit.

However unemployment is not tipped to fall to pre-pandemic levels until 2023-24.

There are also fears the JobMaker program will entrench insecure work.

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Dr Chalmers said Labor would have charted a path back to full employment "in a way that starts to tackle insecure work and chronic underemployment".

"Even after all this spending unemployment is still expected to be too high for too long," Dr Chalmers will tell the Press Club.

"At times like this we don't have a choice between borrowing or not, but we can choose whether we have anything to show for it or not.

"Borrowing is unavoidable right now, but we should not be borrowing to build nothing, change nothing, fix nothing."