Roy Morgan unemployment lifts to 9.2% as COVID cases ease

Roy Morgan has released its unemployment survey for August, with the unemployment rate lifting 0.7% to 9.2% in response to a big reduction in the number of COVID cases in Australia, which saw more people join the labour force:

Key points from the release are as follows:

• The rise in unemployment was due to more people entering the workforce, but unable to find jobs, as both overall employment and unemployment increased.
• The workforce was up 164,000 in August driven by increasing employment and unemployment.
• Australian employment increased 47,000 to a new record high of 13,487,000 in August.
• Under-employment increased in August to 1.33 million (8.9% of the workforce) – the highest level so far this year.
• In total 2.69 million Australians (18.1% of the workforce) were either unemployed or under-employed in August, up 176,000 on July.
• Compared to early March 2020, before the nation-wide lockdown, in August 2022 there were more than 530,000 more Australians either unemployed or under-employed (+2.5% points) even though overall employment (13,487,000) is over 600,000 higher than it was pre-COVID-19 (12,872,000).