Australia's labour market is weaker than it looks

The latest Statement of Monetary Policy from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) forecasts the unemployment rate will remain at 4.4% through to the end of 2027.

Today, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the November labour force report, which reported that the unemployment rate remained at 4.3% in both seasonally adjusted and trend terms, in line with the RBA’s expectations.

However, the internal data was weaker, showing that annual job growth slowed to just 1.3% after a loss of 21,300 jobs in November (driven by a 56,500 decline in full-time jobs), which is well below the working-age population growth rate of 2.0%:

The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers

$1 for your first month, then:

$24.99 / month

$249 / year

Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe

Share

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.

Australia’s labour market is weaker than it looks