The unemployment rate remained unchanged in November at 4.3% according to fresh data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
According to ABS head of labour statistics, Sean Crick, the unemployment rate has remained at 4.3% in five of the last six months.
“Both the number of unemployed and employed people fell in November, by 2,000 and by 21,000 respectively,” he said.
Full-time employment fell by 57,000, with males (40,000) falling at a much higher rate than females (16,000).
Part-time employment rose by 35,000 and was partially offset by the fall in full-time employment.
More females started working part-time than males, with both rising by 29,000 and 6,000, respectively.
“With the fall in the number of employed and unemployed people in November, the participation rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 66.7%,” Crick said.
“The number of employed people has risen 1.3% over the past 12 months, which is weaker than the 2.0% growth in population.”
The employment-to-population ratio fell by 0.2 percentage points to 63.8% this month.
While the unemployment rate remained steady, underemployment rose by 0.4 percentage points to 6.2% in November.
This is also 0.1 percentage points higher than the same time last year and 2.6 percentage points lower than March 2020.
“In original terms, the number of underemployed people who worked part-time, but would prefer more hours, rose 5.9% over the last year,” Crick said.
“This was led by males, which grew 17.0%, whereas females recorded a small fall of 1.7%.”
The trend unemployment rate fell to 4.3% after staying at 4.4% for the last two months, according to Crick.
‘Trend employment grew by around 21,000 people, or 0.1%, in November, and 1.3% in the last 12 months,” he said.
“This is despite a fall in seasonally adjusted terms this month.
“Monthly hours worked rose 0.1%, in line with the 0.1% increase in employment.
“Annual growth in hours worked in November was at 1.1%, which is slightly lower than the 1.3% rise in employment in the last 12 months.”
