Recall Phil Lowe’s optimistic outlook for the Australian labour market:
The outlook for the labour market remains positive. The national unemployment rate currently stands at 5 per cent, the lowest in over seven years (Graph 5). In New South Wales and Victoria, the unemployment rate is around 4¼ per cent. You have to go back to the early 1970s to see sustained lower rates of unemployment in these two states. The forward-looking indicators of the labour market also remain positive. The number of job vacancies is at a record high and firms’ hiring intentions remain strong. Our central scenario is that growth will be sufficient to see a modest further decline in unemployment to around 4¾ per cent over the next couple of years.
