Earlier this week, Roy Morgan Research released its shadow labour force report, which posted a large 0.8% jump in unemployment in August to 11.1%. Roy Morgan’s unemployment measure was also up a hefty 2.0% year-on-year:
Roy Morgan effectively counts someone as unemployed if they want a job but are unable to get one. Therefore, it is a broader definition than the ABS’ stricter unemployment measure, which explains why Roy Morgan’s unemployment rate is always higher.
Roy Morgan’s measure of total labor underutilisation—i.e., unemployment and underemployment combined—also rose by 0.8% in August to 22.0% and was 3.4% higher over the year:
As illustrated in the charts above, Roy Morgan’s shadow labour force survey has broken away from the ABS series over the past nine months.
On Wednesday, Jobs & Skills Australia (JSA) released its Internet Vacancies Index (IVI), which captures de-duplicated job ads on SEEK, CareerOne and Workforce Australia.
As shown below, the IVI reached a new cyclical low following a 4.2% (8,900 job) decline in job advertisements in August:
Over the year to August 2025, online job advertisements decreased by 12.2% (or 28,000).
Recruitment activity decreased across all states and territories over the month, as well as across all skill levels and major occupation groups.
The following chart from Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro plots JSA’s IVI against the official unemployment rate. As you can see, it is pointing to rising unemployment.
While Roy Morgan’s survey and the IVI are ominous for the labour market, it isn’t all bad news.
The latest NAB employment survey reported sharply falling capital utilisation which, as Justin Fabo shows below, can be a useful leading indicator of underlying trends in the unemployment rate.
“Recent increases in capacity utilisation (it’s inverted in the chart) point to the risk that the jobless rate could actually decline in coming months”, Fabo wrote last week.
Thus, there are mixed signals for the labour market.
It will be interesting to see what today’s official ABS labour force release for August shows. It could go either way.
