Was the June jobs data as good as it gets for jobs and unemployment given the growing spread of the Delta variant of Covid, especially in the country’s biggest state economy, NSW?
It looks like it with Victoria announcing a snap lockdown for at least three days and signs that other states are starting to tighten restrictions.
Suddenly the good jobs report for June looks very dated.
The report showed national unemployment fell to an 11-year low 4.9% in June, topping forecasts as well as taking into account the small flare up in infections in Melbourne in the month.
The June figure was an improvement from 5.1% in May, and a 0.4 percentage point drop on the March 2020 level, and the lowest the rate it has been since December 2010.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed the number of unemployed people fell by 22,000 in June to 679,000. This was around 325,000 people below the peak of 1 million unemployed people in July 2020, the ABS said.
Employment rose by 29,000 people last month, according to the ABS. Full time jobs were up by another 51,600 in June, after rising 97,500 in May.
Hours worked nationally dipped 1.8% in the month, dragged down by an 8.4% slide in hours in a briefly locked-down Victoria, and rising 0.5% in the rest of Australia
Bjorn Jarvis, the ABS head of labour statistics, said it was the eighth consecutive monthly fall in the unemployment rate.
“The declining unemployment rate continues to coincide with employers reporting high levels of job vacancies and difficulties in finding suitable people for them,” Mr Jarvis said a statement with the data
The youth unemployment rate dropped by 0.5 percentage points to 10.2%, which was 1.4 percentage points below the rate at the start of the pandemic.
The last time we saw a youth unemployment rate of 10.2% was in January 2009.
The AMP’s chief economist Shane Oliver says the lockdown in Sydney could see unemployment rise back towards 5.5% of it is prolonged (he wrote his note before the three-day snap lockdown was called for Victoria on Thursday afternoon).
“However, given the business and household support measures in place and assuming other states are less affected and continue to grow this should be contained to just below 5.5% and once NSW starts to reopen again unemployment is likely to push back towards 5% and possibly just below by year end,” he wrote in his note.
That’s all history now given the developments in NSW and possibly in Victoria and Queensland.
