That is a huge drop in the unemployment rate, and a huge number of jobs added.
The jobless rate has been assisted by the drop in the participation rate, but I wouldn’t go sullying the figures too much. Jobs data are volatile, but this is a great set of headlines. The Reserve Bank of Australia can keep rates higher for longer, if they wish to, on numbers like this.
- Underutilisation rate (combining unemployed and underemployed people) down to 10.3% (from January’s 10.8%).
- hours worked +2.8% m/m and +0.8% y/y
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All of the above numbers are the headline ‘seasonally adjusted’, and they’ve been volatile with reported issues surrounding figuring out the seasonality. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is wall-to-wall PhDs so you’d think they could figure it out. Anyway, sometimes the lesser-watched ‘trend’ numbers can be a better guide, and these are showing a steady unemployment rate and jobs added: