And there could be further costs such as lower GST revenue and a greater call on healthcare and other essential services at concessional rates.

Research undertaken by the Parliamentary Library at the request of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has shone a light on the hidden cost of factory closures, putting the cumulative bill for a series of post-election announcements as high as $616 million.

The figure quantifies for the first time the other side of the government's ''end of the age of entitlement'' policy, which labels company assistance as ''corporate welfare'' and dictates that taxpayer funds should not be used to protect jobs.

The modelling assumes the newly unemployed had been earning average weekly income in the private sector of $57,200 per year, and that they will take 12 months on average to find other work. It also aggregates jobs already axed with the thousands more slated to end in future months and years.

These include employers in the manufacturing and resources sectors from Electrolux, Forge, Alcoa, Rio Tinto and Qantas, to car makers Holden and Toyota.

The government argues that propping up dying industries and poorly managed firms only rewards bad practices and delays the inevitable. Many economists agree, with Deloitte Access director Chris Richardson backing the short-term cost of redundancies over long-term costs from industry support.

But the costs of allowing large numbers of workers to fall out of paid work and into unemployment has not been prominent in the political argument. Mr Shorten said the government had not been upfront about the impact of the decisions to leave auto workers and others to their own devices in a worsening labour market.

''This government promised a million new jobs over five years but all we've seen since it was elected is jobs going overseas,'' he said.

''It's bad enough these jobs are going, but it's even worse that the government hasn't even put up a fight for them.''

Some economists work on the so-called ''thirds'' theory in the aftermath of factory closures, arguing a third of the displaced workforce - usually the younger employees - turn out to have readily transferable skills and pick up work quickly. Another third takes a lot longer to find work and even then may not earn as much, and the final third - often the older employees - never secure paid work again.

But Australian National University professor of economics, Bob Gregory, said quantifying the costs either to the budget, or to individuals displaced, was extremely ''tricky'' because of a plethora of situational factors.

These include where and when someone is made unemployed, and what their personal circumstances are including age, mobility, savings, assets, and the income of their partners. This made predicting the aggregate cost of unemployment benefits problematic because a surprisingly large number of the jobless do not qualify for the dole.

Some economists say the fact of short-term costs to the budget does not make the policy of ending corporate welfare wrong.

''There are costs to the budget, but they don't last long,'' Dr Richardson said. ''What tends to last are the costs of subsidising businesses. Chances are that in the long term, the budget is healthier if people work for companies that don't need government subsidies to stay in business.''