Australian unemployment has fallen by 88,000 to 1,362,000 people in November 2024 according to Roy Morgan, with many of these people finding work.
This is a drop of 0.6 per cent, and now makes up 8.6 per cent of the workforce.
The fall in unemployment comes as the Australian workforce grew by 95,000 to 15,792,000 in November and overall employment increased by 183,000 to 14,430,000.
Roy Morgan’s unemployment estimates were obtained by surveying an Australia-wide cross section of people aged 14 or above. A person is classified as unemployed if they are looking for work, no matter when.
In addition to the unemployed, a further 1.54 million Australians (9.8 per cent of the workforce) were under-employed, up 68,000 from October. Roy Morgan classifies this as working part-time but looking for more work.
In total 2.91 million Australians (18.4 per cent of the workforce) were either unemployed or under-employed in November.
On the flipside, part-time employment grew significantly in November, Roy Morgan reported, as the market entered the pre-Christmas and Black Friday sales period. Part-time employment grew by 420,000 to 5,163,000 while full-time employment decreased by 237,000 to 9,267,000.
The overall workforce across Australia is up by 874,000 people from two years ago.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said the longer-term surge in the workforce comes after rapid population growth post-COVID.
“These latest figures for November show the Australian employment market is providing new jobs, but not at a rate to keep pace with the rapidly growing population,” Levine said.
“Over the last two years since November 2022 the Australian population has increased by over 1.4 million – more people than live in Australia’s fifth largest city of Adelaide.
“The increase in population is clearly more than double the average population growth across a two-year period over the last 25 years of 578,000.”
Speaking on the workforce surge since November 2022, Levine said there is a gap there with employment increases not keeping pace with the growing workforce.
“That gap, of over 20,000, has led to an increase in unemployment since pandemic restrictions were ended in late 2022,” she said.
“Looking back over this period, the rapidly inflating Australian population and workforce has led to a persistently high level of labour under-utilisation. Since July 2022 total unemployed and under-employed has been stuck above 2.5 million, and more recently, over the last 18 months since May 2023 total labour under-utilisation has been stuck above 2.7 million and averaged well over 2.9 million since then.
“These figures show that as we close in on another federal election, due by early next year, the Federal Government must make tackling these persistent high levels of unemployment under-employment the number one priority heading into that election.”