In seasonally adjusted terms, in October 2021:
- The unemployment rate increased by 0.6 pts to 5.2%
- The unemployment rate was less than 0.1 pts below March 2020
- Unemployed people increased by 81,800 to 707,300
- Unemployed people was 15,900 lower than March 2020
- The youth unemployment rate increased by 2.3 pts to 13.1%
- The youth unemployment rate was 1.5 pts higher than March 2020
Employment
In seasonally adjusted terms, in October 2021:
- Employment decreased by 46,300 people (0.4%) to 12,835,200 people
- Employment was 160,300 people (1.2%) lower than March 2020
According to Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at the ABS:
“As we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, the changes in the labour markets with lockdowns continued to have a large influence on the national figures”.
“There was early recovery in New South Wales, with their participation rate increasing by 0.8 percentage points in October. This was underpinned by increases in both employment (22,000) and unemployment (35,000), with their labour force increasing by around 57,000 people. However, it was still 218,000 people lower than in May.”
“In contrast, while Victoria’s unemployment also increased, by 29,000 people, employment fell by a further 50,000, with their participation rate falling by 0.4 percentage points. The Victorian labour force was 113,000 people lower than in May.”
Analysts expected a 50,000 increase in jobs with the unemployment rate expected to rise to 4.8% off a larger expected increase in participation (to 64.9%).
So this result was a big miss.
