The latest Roy Morgan employment estimate is out with the full unemployment rate estimated at 8.6% and over 1 million Australian’s looking for work.
From the research poll:
- Unemployment was 8.6% (unchanged the entire December Quarter 2011) — an estimated 1,034,000 Australians were unemployed and looking for work. Australia’s highest unemployment rate since March 2004 (8.8%).
- A further 8.2% of the workforce were working part-time looking for more work (underemployed) — 978,000 Australians.
- In total 16.8% of the workforce, or 2.01 million Australians, were unemployed or underemployed.
- The Australian workforce in December was 12,005,000, up 293,000 since December 2010 — comprising 7,389,000 full-time workers (up 39,000); 3,582,000 part-time workers (up 123,000) and 1,034,000 looking for work (up 131,000).
- The latest Roy Morgan unemployment estimate of 8.6% is 3.3% above the 5.3% currently quoted by the ABS for November 2011 — the ABS December unemployment is not due to be released until January 19, 2011
The last note is very interesting and continues the divergence with the official ABS data, show below:
We’ll have to wait til January 19th for any change in the ABS data, which has had an uptick (noisy on the raw numbers) in the most recent results, to compare these most recent poll results, but Gary Morgan appears to be closer to the truth than the interest rate hawks:
These economists are wrong to talk about a ‘tight’ labour market in Australia driving wage pressures. Wage demands (inflation) at the moment are being driven by unions — a small minority of the Australian workforce — not by a tight labour market with workers changing jobs to secure better wages and conditions. Today’s Roy Morgan employment estimates show why inflation in Australia is contained, and will remain contained — in February the RBA must drop interest rates by at least 0.5% and probably more.
A 50 basis point cut in February by the RBA is looking less likely as sentiment around snapshot PMI data increases although the Christmas retail sales results may dent that shortly.