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The Brotherhood of St Laurence has released a report looking at the issue of high youth unemployment rates across the country (report here)
The report paints a dismal picture of high levels of youth unemployment across the nation, although they use a simple 12 month moving average of the original ABS regional data to compile their tables. While we agree with the general conclusions of the report we would suggest that the Conus Trend series available for both Queensland and NSW give us a far more timely indicator of the actual story on the ground in the regions. Therefore, below, we compare the data used by the report with that from the Conus Trend Youth unemployment rates in Queensland and NSW.
NSW 5 Worst Hotspots; youth unemployment rate and change from 2 years ago
Brotherhood of St Laurence data
Conus data
As we see the Brotherhood data appears to be suggesting Southern Highlands and Shoalhaven is substantially worse than our data has it. Conus put Murray far worse than the 12 mma would have us believe and Illawarra is worse than Coffs Harbour (which drops from the top 5). The disparity between Greater Sydney (Trend youth unemployment rate of 10.4%) and the Rest of Sydney (15.0%) is marked.
QLD 5 Worst Hotspots; youth unemployment rate and change from 2 years ago
Brotherhood of St Laurence data
Conus data
In Queensland, the two data-sets are more similar except that the Brotherhood data does recognise the improvement seen in Townsville in the past 9 months (this is the problem with using such a lagged measure as a 12 mma) which has seen the Conus Trend youth unemployment rate there fall to 15.5%. Whatever way you look at the data the story for regional youth unemployment is not a happy one with the Conus Trend youth unemployment rate in the Rest of Queensland at 14.2% against 12.6% in Greater Brisbane; although this disparity is much less than seen in NSW.
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series