Since the start of 2025, the Australian labour market has been on a rollercoaster.
It has produced month-on-month results that any government would gladly take credit for, such as the October print, and it has produced results that policymakers would rather forget, such as the 52,800 jobs lost in the February release.
But cutting through the noise and looking at the big picture from the start of the year reveals a labour market that is still performing at the low end of what could be considered a “normal range”, but is failing to create enough jobs to keep up with the still elevated rate of working-age population growth, and by extension labour force growth.
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