Unemployment Up – Probably!

The ABS released their much heralded employment data today for September, having warned yesterday about the seasonally adjusted sets.

Australia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased 0.1 percentage points to 6.1 per cent in September 2014, as announced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today. The seasonally adjusted labour force participation rate decreased 0.2 percentage points to 64.5 per cent in September 2014.

The ABS reported the number of people employed decreased by 29,700 to 11,592,500 in September 2014 (seasonally adjusted). The decrease in employment was driven by decreased part-time employment for both females (down 31,600 persons) and males (down 19,700 persons). In trend terms the number of people employed increased by 5,600 in September 2014.

The ABS monthly seasonally adjusted aggregate hours worked series decreased in September 2014, down 15.0 million hours (0.9%) to 1,591.3 million hours. The seasonally adjusted number of people unemployed increased by 11,000 to 746,600 in September 2014, the ABS reported.

Looking at the original state data, we see the rate higher in VIC, and lower in WA, and rising on both these states. SA has fallen a little.

TrendUnemploymentOrignalSept2014

State participation also varies, with consistently higher rates in WA, and lower in SA and NSW. Some of this reflects the demographic differences between the states as we discussed recently.

TrendParticipationOrignalSept2014We expect unemployment to continue to trend higher in coming months.


Author: Martin North

Martin North is the Principal of Digital Finance Analytics

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