Australia’s unemployment rate rose to 4.5% in September from a revised 4.3% in August, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
“This is the highest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate recorded since November 2021,” ABS Head of Labour Statistics Sean Crick said in a media release.
He said the number of unemployed people increased by 34,000 to 684,000 while the number of employed people grew by 15,000 to 14.64 million in the same period.
The participation rate, which measures working-age people employed or actively looking for work, rose by 0.1 percentage points to 67.0% as a result of these increases but remained below the record high of 67.2% at the beginning of the year.
The employment-to-population ratio remained steady at 64.0%.
The number of unemployed men rose by 24,000 to 370,000, while the number of unemployed women rose by 10,000 to 314,000.
Full-time employment rose by 9,000 as the number of full-time employed men increased by 23,000, while women in this category fell by 15,000.
Part-time employment rose by 6,000 as women in this position rose 19,000, while men fell 13,000.
The underemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage points to 5.9% in September, 0.3 percentage points lower than September 2024, and 2.8 percentage points lower than March 2020.
The underutilisation rate, which combines the unemployment and underemployment rates, rose by 0.4 percentage points to 10.4%, 0.1 percentage points higher than September 2024, and 3.5 percentage points lower than March 2020.
