3 days Ago By Cameron Micallef
More Australians are back in the workforce in March, correcting a major fall in employment at the start of the year. Fresh figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed 32,000 more Australians found work in March. Overall Australia’s unemployment rate rose to 4.
1 per cent, beating forecasts of unemployment rising to 4.2 per cent. ABS head of labour statistics Sean Crick, said while there were more jobs created, 3,000 people lost their job in March.
“Employment has grown by 308,000 people, or 2.2 per cent, over the last 12 months,” he said. “This annual growth rate is slightly higher than the 20-year pre-pandemic average of 2.
0 per cent.” The employment-to-population ratio remained at 64.1 per cent in March, while the participation rate increased slightly to 66.
8 per cent. But the number of hours worked decreased by 0.3 per cent, falling for the second month in a row, despite the growth in employment this month.
The labour force data was the most important piece of domestic data released today, which so far has proven resilient despite cost of living pressures. While more Australians found a job in the last month, it comes off the back of a surprising fall in employment over February, as a spike of older Australians and females left the workforce. KPMG chief economist Brendan Rynne said at the time the large drop in employment was due to more Aussies retiring as well as a fall in the female participation rate.
“It is possible that a combination of the stage 3 tax cuts, the February interest rate cut and some wages growth in partner incomes have done enough to ease household budgets and pull them back from looking for work,” Mr Rynne said..
