Key Points
Across the Federation as a whole, there were no clear commonalities but rather variations on a general theme of consolidation in August. The unemployment rate for the Federation as a whole increased slightly, but big shifts between the States and Territories render the National number potentially misleading.
Queensland and the ACT led the Federation in decreased unemployment rates. But Queensland’s decline in unemployment was driven by workers (possibly discouraged) exiting a consolidating market.
In Tasmania, the Northern Territory and Victoria, unemployment rates jumped over August. However, in the Northern Territory, this was probably an artificial spike due to a flood of prospective jobseekers entering the market.
Labour Force Survey: what it is, why it matters
The Labour Force survey is one of our most important indicators for the state of the economy. It comes closest to giving us an idea of the lives of everyday people by giving us a snapshot of Australia at work. The key numbers in this survey are:
Employment: the number of persons who worked a certain number of hours.
Unemployment: the number of persons searching for, but unable to become employed.
Underemployment: the number of employed persons who’d like to work more hours.
Hours worked: the total hours worked by all workers.
From this we get a couple of derived numbers: the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate. The key limitation of the first is the slippery definition of unemployment; it’s easy for the unemployment rate to drop because unemployed people get discouraged and leave the labour force. So, we use a few different numbers to get a good picture of the underlying strength of the labour market across the Federation.
Though we still must acknowledge that this gives us a very quantitative view of the market and we don’t have a great sense of what these jobs are like, these numbers in concert give us a rich sense of Australia at work across the Federation.
As always, we use seasonally adjusted numbers to get a little bit of the volatility stripped out. First, with such a tricky set of derived numbers, we start by looking at the momentum of the key raw numbers across the Federation: employment and unemployment (which give us a more quantitative view) and underemployment and hours worked (which give us a more qualitative view). This allows us to contextualise the derived numbers that they generate, which we consider next: the unemployment rate, employment to population rate and underemployment rate.
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