Unemployment keeps rising to 5.3 per cent in August
It has been rising since hitting a seasonally adjusted decade low of 4.9 per cent in February and is now at its highest point since June last year.
It is disheartening for the Reserve Bank, which has been hoping the trend would be moving down to 4.5 per cent — its theoretical idea of full employment that would drive wages growth up.
It is, of course, worse for the estimated 716,800 people stuck in the jobless queue.
The increase in unemployment comes despite an estimated 34,700 jobs being added last month.
However, that increase was heavily skewed to part-time work, with more than 50,000 part-time positions being created, while 15,500 full-time jobs were shed.
The quality of job creation is also becoming an issue, with the annual pace of full-time job creation slowing back to levels seen at the end of last year, while full-time work as a percentage of jobs created is now at its lowest level in more than a year.
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-19/unemployment-continues-to-rise-hitting-5.3-per-cent-in-august/11527108
