Inside Australia’s jobs bloodbath

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As summarised earlier, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released its labour force report for April, which registered an unprecedented 594,300 decrease in total employment but only a 1% rise in the headline unemployment rate (from 5.5% to 6.2%) due to a collapse in the participation rate:

Again, total employment collapsed by a seasonally adjusted 594,300 to 12,418,700. Full-time jobs fell by 220,500, whereas part-time employment fell by 373,800:

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The participation rate dived by 2.4% to 63.5%, which is why the unemployment rate only rose by 1.0%:

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.