Conus Trend SALM data for local Councils

Posted on September 25, 2018 by Pete Faulkner - Cairns, CCRC, Jobs, SALM, Townsville, Uncategorized

The Dept of Employment today released their Small Area Labour Market data for the June quarter. The headline data is presented as a smoothed 4 quarters average at both Local Govt Area and SA2 level. However, hidden in the release is the original, unsmoothed, data and from that we create the Conus Trend series for all the QLD LGAs as well as the SA2 and SA3 areas within the broader Cairns region.

The Conus Trend unemployment rates for our various LGAs in the Far North are;

Cairns Regional Council – 6.4%
Douglas Shire Council – 5.4%
Cassowary Coast Regional Council – 7.0%
Tablelands Regional Council – 7.4%
Mareeba Shire Council – 9.2%
Yarrabah Aboriginal Council – 55.7%

To our south Townsville City Council now sits at 9.2%.

Digging a little deeper into the Cairns region by considering the SA3 regions we see that Conus Trend unemployment rates are;

Cairns North – 3.3%
Cairns South – 8.1%
Innisfail Cassowary Coast – 9.5% (this includes Yarrabah)
Port Douglas Daintree – 5.3%
Tablelands Kuranda East – 8.5%

We note that these Trends are based on quarterly data and the more responsive monthly Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend has shown declines in the unemployment rate in recent months at the Cairns SA4 level. This is likely to be reflected in declines in coming quarters of the SALM data, with downward revisions to previous month’s Trend likely.