Australia’s jobs boom continued in January, but the floods in Queensland make it hard to work out the real strength of employment in the month.
After December surprised with just 2,300 jobs created, but a fall to 5% for the unemployment rate, there were some analysts who saw another weak month, and others looking for an extra 15,000 to 20,000 jobs.
Because of the floods it seems we got all three from the Australian Bureau of Statistics report and a bit more.
The unemployment rate remained steady on 5%, the number of people employed rose 24,000, but 32,000 were part time, so there was a fall of 8,000 people in full time work, the number of people unemployed rose by 8,900 to 606,500, the number of hours worked fell 0.8% and the participation rate rose to a new all time high of 65.9 %(up 0.1%).
Something for everyone it seems, but the ABS added a bit cautionary note to the release.
"Due to flooding in Queensland, operational difficulties were experienced in conducting the Labour Force Survey in January 2011. There was a larger than usual number of households in the Queensland sample which could not be interviewed.
"While the disruption to survey operations will have slightly reduced the quality of some Queensland estimates, the impact on the estimates is not statistically significant for most series. Due to the sample loss noted above, there will be increased volatility in the Queensland estimates, particularly in the original and seasonally adjusted estimates.
"Given increased volatility, the ABS continues to encourage users to focus on trend estimates in monitoring the underlying level of series."
And, what did the trend show?
Employment increased by 21,600 to 11,442,800
Unemployment fell 5,000 to 610,300
Unemployment rate was steady at 5.1%
Participation rate at 66.0%, up from 65.9%
Aggregate monthly hours worked increased to 1,600.0 million hours.
Strip out Queensland and the rest of the country showed gains. But with so many part time jobs being added, and the 8,000 cut to full time jobs, you could also argue that the jobs boom is starting to look tired.
A feature of a tiring jobs boom is a sudden jump in the number of part time employees (which can also mark a broader slowing of the economy) and a slowing or slippage in the number of full time jobs as employees become hesitant and start cutting back on full time work.
That’s usually in reaction to a slowing in sales, as you also see at uncertain times, such as national disasters or after a poor Christmas sales season for retailers.
So we will have to wait at least a month to see what happened in February and any revisions in January. March though will probably produce a clearer picture and that report will come in early April.
