More than 50,000 people found work last month, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said on Thursday.
The news from the June labour force report immediately prompted the "rate rise looms" crowd in the markets and business press to call for a rate increase at the August meeting of the Reserve Bank.
In addition to the 50,200 jobs—vastly more than the 20,000 predicted by economists in several surveys—the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose by less than 0.1 percentage point to 4.1% in June, according to data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
With the jobless rate above 4% since April, the second quarter of this year saw an unemployment rate above 4% for the first time in a while.
The year started with a 4.1% rate in January when there was a buildup in the number of people about to start work. This happened in February, causing the jobless rate to dip to 3.7%, only to rise again from March onwards.
Despite the strong jobs data, there remains a disconnect with the continuing slide in job vacancies—down 2.7% in the three months to May and 17.7% over the past 12 months. Yet, employment rose by 2.8%, or nearly 388,000, in the year to June.
Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labour statistics, explained: "With employment rising by around 50,000 people and the number of unemployed growing by 10,000 people, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1%, and the participation rate rose to 66.9%."
He noted that the participation rate in June was only 0.1 percentage point lower than the historical high of 67.0% in November last year.
"The employment-to-population ratio rose by 0.1 percentage point to 64.2%, which was also close to its historical high of 64.4% in November 2023.
"The employment-to-population ratio and participation rate both continue to be near their 2023 highs. This, along with the continued high level of job vacancies, suggests the labour market remains relatively tight, despite the unemployment rate being above 4.0% since April.
“Unemployment rose by 10,000 people in June, following a fall of 9,000 in May. While it has increased from a low of 491,000 people in October 2022 to 608,000 in June, it is still around 100,000 people, or 14.2%, lower than just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The unemployment rate was 0.5 percentage points higher than in June last year and 1.1 percentage points lower than in March 2020,” Mr. Jarvis said.
Seasonally adjusted monthly hours worked rose 0.8% last month, faster than the 0.3% rise in the number of people employed.
"In June, we continued to see more people than usual working reduced hours because they were sick, similar to what we saw in May. Around 4.5% of employed people in June could not work their usual hours because they were sick, compared to the pre-pandemic average for June of 3.6%,” Mr. Jarvis said.
"However, we also saw fewer people taking annual leave in June 2024. There were around 12.5% of people working fewer hours because they were on leave, compared with the pre-pandemic average for June of 14.5%. This contributed to the increase in hours worked this month.”
Consistent with the increase in hours worked, the seasonally adjusted underemployment rate fell by 0.3 percentage points to 6.5%. The underemployment rate was 0.1 percentage point lower than in June last year and 2.3 percentage points lower than in March 2020.
