Australia’s employment boom continued in February with another solid performance thanks to enjoyed another solid increase as full-time positions surged, though the unemployment rose as more people went looking for work.
Thursday’s figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed a seasonally adjusted 17,500 net new jobs were added in February. It was the 17th straight month of rises, the longest such run since the series began in 1978, according to Bureau data.
There was nothing in the jobs report to cause the Reserve Bank to think again about its watch and hold monetary police setting.
And the AMP’s Chief Economist, Dr Shane Oliver says that if anything the February report revealed there is still more unused capacity in the labour market.
And the RBA is a long way from following the Fed higher in terms of interest rates because there is still a lot of spare capacity in the Australian labour market compared to the US. In fact labour market underutilisation rose slightly in Australia in February to 13.9%.
“We don’t expect the RBA to start raising rates until early next year," he added.
Annual job growth of 3.5% seasonally adjusted (3.3% on a trend basis) was maintained as the number of full-time jobs jumped sharply, more than making up for a sharp fall in January.
Full-time jobs grew by 64,900 from a revised loss of 53,200 in the previous month (previously a loss of 49,800) and part-time jobs fell by 47,400 from an increase of 65,600 in January.
January’s net net jobs grew by 12,500, down from the first reported 16,000. The unemployment rate nudged up to 5.6%, from 5.5% in January, and has hovered between 5.4% and 5.6% for most of the past year.
The participation rate climbed to 65.7%, matching the highest since early 2011, as more women entered the labour force. The female participation rate hit a new high of 60.6%.
In the more accurate trend terms the ABS said monthly full-time employment increased for the 16th straight month in February with full-time employment up by a further 8,000 in February, while part-time employment rose 12,000 persons, for a total increase of 19,000 people.
“Full-time employment has now increased by around 293,000 persons over the past year, and makes up the majority of the 400,000 increase in employment,” ABS chief economist Bruce Mr Hockman said in yesterday’s statement.
Over the past year, trend employment increased by 3.3%, which is above the average year-on-year growth over the past 20 years (1.9%).
The trend monthly hours worked decreased slightly, by 1.4 million hours (0.1%), with the annual figure continuing to show strong growth (2.7%).
Over the past year, the states and territories with the strongest annual growth in trend employment were the ACT (4.7%) Queensland (4.6%) and New South Wales (3.9%), according to the ABS.
