The unemployment rate hit 3.9% in November 2023, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data revealed.
This is up from a revised 3.8% in October.
ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the rate increase comes as employment lifted by 61,000 people while the number of unemployed people rose by 19,000.
“The combination of strong growth in both employment and unemployment in November saw the employment-to-population ratio return to a record high of 64.6% and the participation rate reach a new high of 67.2%,” Jarvis said.
“We have continued to see employment growth keeping pace with high population growth through 2023. The employment-to-population ratio has been high for a long time now, between 64.4% and 64.6% since February 2023, and between 64.3% and 64.6% for the past 18 months.”
Similarly, Jarvis said participation also continues to be high.
“In addition to strong employment growth over the past year, the number of unemployed people has also increased by around 81,000 people, and the unemployment rate has risen by 0.4 percentage points.
“However, both unemployment measures remain well below their pre-pandemic levels.”
While employment growth continued into November 2023, rising by 0.4%, monthly hours worked rose by less than 0.1%.
Jarvis said the recent slowdown in hours worked over the past six months continued into November, with the total number of hours worked now around where it had been back in May.
“However, this follows very strong growth during late 2022 and early 2023,” Jarvis said.
“The slowing in hours means that overall growth rates in employment and hours worked are now similar over the past 18 months. The narrowing gap between these two growth rates suggests that the labour market is now less tight than it has been.”
Meanwhile, research firm Roy Morgan claims ‘real’ unemployment was down 0.2% to 9.7%, at an estimated 1.5 million Australians in November 2023.
This is despite employment hitting a record high of over 14 million for the first time, with over 9 million people employed full time and 5 million employed part-time.
There were more people looking for full-time jobs (up 20,000 to 626,000) but many fewer people looking for part-time jobs (down 57,000 to 879,000) compared to a month ago. In addition, there were a further 1,532,000 Australians (down 45,000) now under-employed.
When including under-employed people, Roy Morgan’s unemployment rate is 19.6% of the workforce or 3.04 million people.
The November Roy Morgan Unemployment estimates were obtained by surveying an Australia-wide cross section of people aged 14+. A person is classified as unemployed if they are looking for work, no matter when. The ‘real’ unemployment rate is presented as a percentage of the workforce (employed & unemployed).
Compared to early March 2020, before the nation-wide lockdown, in November 2023 there were almost 900,000 more Australians either unemployed or under-employed (+4% points) even though overall employment (14,010,000) is over 1.1 million higher than it was pre-COVID-19 (12,872,000).
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said a big reason for these record highs is the large growth in the size of the Australian population over the last year.
“The increases are driven by a record high annual population increase of 817,000 since November 2022,” Levine said.
“This level of increase is almost three times larger than the long-term average over the last 25 years during which the Australian population increased on an annual basis by an average of 278,000.
“The rapidly growing population has led to increases in employment metrics across the board. The Australian workforce has increased by almost 600,000 from a year ago to 15,515,000 and overall employment is up 430,000 to 14,010,000. The employed consists of full-time employment at 9,008,000 and part-time employment of 5,002,000.”
Unfortunately, Levine said there has also been a significant increase in labour under-utilisation over the last year as the economy has been unable to find enw jobs for all those joining the workforce.
“Unemployment has increased by 167,000 and under-employment increased by 155,000,” Levine said. “Overall labour under-utilisation is therefore up by 322,000 from a year ago to 3,037,000 – near post-pandemic highs.
“The high net immigration that is powering this growth in the labour market has kept Australia out of a recession over the last two years with the latest ABS quarterly GDP growth for September 2023 showed the economy growing at only 0.2% for the quarter – less than the rate of population growth.
“However, the swelling workforce is increasingly unable to provide the right type of jobs for all those who need them with over 3 million Australians looking for work or looking for more work.
“Tackling this continuing high level of unemployment and under-employment must be the number one priority for the Federal Government over the next year.”