Unemployment rate jumps up to 6% in January

January 2016 sees the unemployment rate jump up

The unemployment rate in Australia jumped to 6% in January from the previous year’s rate of 5.8% according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Jobs growth is not as strong as it looked a couple of months ago, but not as flat as the latest figures say it is.

ABS states that seasonally adjusted, the number of full-time employed fell 40,600, while the number of part-time employed increased by 32,700.

The jobless rate in January is also higher than the 5.8% rate in December 2015. Although the reported jobless rate ticked up from 5.8% to 6.0% in January, it’s still down from 6.3% in January 2015.

“The trend shows that around 302,000 more people were employed in January 2016 than in January 2015 and full-time employment growth was a bit stronger than part-time growth over the year, increasing by 169,800 people,” General Manager of ABS’ Macroeconomic Statistics Division, Bruce Hockman said.

Over the past month, trend employment increased by 19,800 persons to 11,909,900 persons, which equates to a monthly growth rate of 0.17%. This growth rate was slightly above the monthly average over the past 20 years (0.15%), and continues the recent trend in relatively strong employment growth.

The trend series smooth the more volatile seasonally adjusted estimates and provide the best measure of the underlying behaviour of the labour market.

The seasonally adjusted number of persons employed decreased by 7,900 in January 2016, while the number of persons unemployed increased by 30,200.

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