There’s some good news for QLD in the labour force data

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Pete Faulkner - Jobs, QLD, Uncategorized

The ABS release of the labour force survey data for Jan gives us our first look at how the employment picture started the year. On a seasonally adjusted basis employment jumped by 39,100 (with full-time positions up 65,400), much stronger than the market expectation of 15,000 increase. An almost-5,000 revision downward of the Dec data only took a little off the shine of another strong set of numbers. However, despite the strong employment growth the headline unemployment rate remained at 5.0% as participation ticked higher.

The less volatile Trend data shows a 24,900 increase in employment which took annual employment growth to 2.4%. The Trend unemployment rate remains at 5.1% (after Dec was revised up from 5.0%).

The data for Queensland is something of a confusing mess but, when we dig deeper, it shows us a generally more positive picture. Seasonally adjusted data has employment dropping by 19,900 on the back of a huge decline in part-time employment; full-time positions are estimated to have increased by 42,200 in January! While this may appear rather unbelievable (and frankly is), the Trend data paints us a more credible picture which shows full-time employment has been on a rapid rise for the past 2 years and was up another 5,000 in Jan.

The conversion of employment from part-time to full-time that this demonstrates does not show up in total employment numbers, nor does it impact unemployment rates. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in QLD fell in Jan to 6.0% but only because of a sharp drop in participation. The Trend unemployment rate is now 6.1% (unchanged from a downwardly revised Dec); although when considered at 2 decimal places we see a decline from 6.11% to 6.06%.

Where the improving full-time/part-time mix does show up is when we consider the average hours worked per capita of working age population. Here we see a solid improvement in QLD, since full-time employment started to lift in Jan 2017. Since then the average hours worked per capita has risen by 1.7% to 87.37 hours; somewhat faster than the 1.3% increase over the same period across Australia.

The ABS will release their original regional labour force data next Thursday at which point we will be updating our Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend data for QLD and NSW.