Australian Unemployment Drops in September

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The resiliency of the Australian Labour market continues to surprise with a seasonally adjusted 40,600 jobs added in September according to the monthly labour force data released by the ABS yesterday. Full-time employment rose by 35,400 whilst part-time employment increased by 5,200. The number of people employed in Australia is 0.1% higher than a year ago.

The number of people unemployed fell by 3,800 whilst the unemployment rate fell to 5.7% from 5.8% in August. If the Australian economy manages to keep unemployment rising over the 6.0% mark during this cycle, that will be a truly amazing feat.

Aggregate monthly hours worked increased 13.4 million hours to 1,522.4 million hours, the strongest gain since July 2008, whilst the average work week rose from 32.35 hours to 32.51 hours. As mentioned last month, given the changes in sampling hours worked is probably the best gauge of employment trends in Australia. As seen below, the current employment decline as measured by hours worked, is tracking similar to the 2000-02 experience.

However it is unwise to get excited about one month’s report, if we see a continuing trend of rising full-time employment coupled with a rising work week, I’ll be a little more positive about a sustained recovery.