From the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Labour Force December 2016 report
Employment Change: +13.5 K
- expected +10.0K, prior +37.1K, revised from +39.1K
Unemployment Rate: 5.8%
- expected 5.7%, prior 5.7%
Full Time Employment Change: +9.3 K
- prior was +38.3K, revised from +39.3K
Part Time Employment Change: +4.2 K
- prior was -1.3K, revised from -0.2K
Participation Rate: 64.7 %
- expected is 64.6%, prior was 64.6%
Those results are the seasonally adjusted, which are the focus.
Here are the 'trend' numbers:
- Total trend employment increased by 8,200 (represents an increase of 0.1 per cent, remaining below the monthly average growth rate over the past 20 years of 0.15 per cent.)
- Monthly trend full-time employment increased by 7,000 (The third consecutive month of increasing full-time employment)
- Part-time +1,100
- Trend unemployment rate was 5.7 per cent (for the ninth consecutive month)
- Trend participation rate was unchanged at 64.6 per cent
- The trend monthly hours worked increased by 2.3 million hours (0.1 per cent), with increases in total hours worked by both full-time workers and part-time workers
- Over the past 12 months, trend employment increased by 85,600 (or 0.7 per cent), which is less than half the size of the average year-on-year growth over the past 20 years (1.8 per cent)
- Over the same 12 month period the trend employment to population ratio, which is a measure of how employed the population over 15 years is, decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 60.9 per cent
(Says the ABS: Trend series smooth the more volatile seasonally adjusted estimates and provide the best measure of the underlying behaviour of the labour market)
Year-on-year employment growth was 0.7 per cent, which was less than half the average growth, of 1.8 per cent, from the past 20 year
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On the headlines this is an Ok report, higher employment (a beat).
Yes, a higher unemployment but the higher participation will be cited to offset that
On the downside, full-time well lower than the previous month
...
So on the headlines its an OK report ... but it doesn't take much digging to see this is a poor report really ...
I'm gonna cite someone who has done some digging already, follow this guy on twitter: @CallamPickering:
- Total hours worked rose by 0.1 per cent in Dec on a trend basis, to be 0.4 per cent higher over the year. Pretty weak result
- Australian employment rose by 85.6k during 2016, which was the worst calendar year result since 2013
- participation rate remains near decade low
And another thing ... Since December 2015 (so, in the past year):
- Full-time employment has fallen by 35,300 persons
- Part-time employment has increased by 120,900 persons