Trend full-time employment growth continues

Monthly trend full-time employment increased for the ninth straight month in June 2017, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today. The trend unemployment rate in Australia decreased by less than 0.1 percentage points to 5.6 per cent in June 2017.

This is good news, in that more people are employment, but of course household income growth is still sluggish and underemployment remains a continuing issue.

Full-time employment grew by a further 30,000 persons, while part-time employment decreased by 4,000 persons, underpinning an increase in total employment of 26,000 persons.

The state by state data (based on original stats) shows an improvement in SA, but a fall in ACT. The smaller states tend to be more volatile.

“Full-time employment has increased by around 187,000 persons since September 2016, with particular strength over the past five months, averaging around 30,000 persons per month,” Chief Economist for the ABS Bruce Hockman said. “Full-time employment now accounts for about 68 per cent of employment, however this is down from around 72 per cent a decade ago.”

Over the past year, trend employment increased by 227,000 persons (or 1.9 per cent), which is the same as the average year-on-year growth over the past 20 years. It has increased since December 2016, when the year-on-year growth was at 0.8 per cent and reflected relatively low employment growth through most of 2016.

The trend monthly hours worked increased by 6.2 million hours (0.4 per cent) to 1,691.5 million hours in June 2017. Most of this increase was hours worked by full-time workers.

The trend unemployment rate in Australia decreased by less than 0.1 percentage points to 5.6 per cent in June 2017.

Trend series smooth the more volatile seasonally adjusted estimates and provide the best measure of the underlying behaviour of the labour market.

The seasonally adjusted number of persons employed increased by 14,000 in June 2017. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained steady at 5.6 per cent, after the May 2017 number was revised up to 5.6 per cent, and the seasonally adjusted labour force participation rate increased to 65.0 per cent.

Author: Martin North

Martin North is the Principal of Digital Finance Analytics

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