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The ABS this morning released their original regional labour force data which allowed us to update our Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend data series.
The Trend series shows us that Greater Brisbane has seen reasonable Trend employment growth for the year (+39,500) at a rate of 3.2% pa, far better than the national rate of 2.1%. The Rest of Queensland has seen Trend employment lift by 23,600 over the year at a rate well below that of Greater Brisbane (+1.9%). The Trend unemployment rate in Greater Brisbane now sits at 6.1% and at 6.8% across the Rest of Queensland. The increase in Queensland’s unemployment rate this year is being driven by the regions rather than Greater Brisbane.
More particularly the increase in the unemployment rate across the State is being driven by increases in unemployment in the youth sector. In Greater Brisbane youth unemployment is up to 14.6% (+1.5 ppts for the year) while in the Rest of QLD it is 15.8% (+3.6 ppts). Despite Trend employment growing by 63,100 over the course of the year youth employment is down a total of 10,500. Trend unemployment rates in the other age cohorts are down for the year.
In our own region Cairns continues to see strong employment growth; +400 this month, but +12,000 for the year at a rate of 10.0%. The very sharp increase in participation in Cairns to a near 7-year high has kept the Trend unemployment rate just above the 6% level (currently 6.2%).
In Townsville we see another 600 added to Trend employment this month and 5,200 (at a rate of 4.9%) for the year. As we noted some months ago, a rise in participation from historically low levels would likely result in a pick-up in the Trend unemployment rate; and that is exactly what we see again this month with participation rising resulting in an upward move in the unemployment rate (coupled with upward revisions to past months). Trend unemployment now sits at 10.2%, a 34 month high. However, the increase in participation has seen a larger increase in unemployment (+5,400) than in employment (+5,200). Of particular concern in Townsville is the rate of youth unemployment which has jumped to 25.0% (the highest in the State).
Today also saw the ABS release their quarterly Industry Employment data. The regional data is only provided as a 4 quarters average so we disaggergate those averages and produce a Trend series from those figures. This shows that over the year to Nov the best gains in Cairns were seen in Healthcare (+3,900), Education (+3,600) and Construction (+2,700) while Retail saw a decline of 2,600.
In Townsville the best gains came from Professional Services (+2,600), Construction (+2,400) and Retail (+2,200). However, substantial losses came in Education (-4,300) and Mining (-2,300). The last of these might come as a surprise given talk of the Adani-related jobs coming to the region.
The complete Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend data is available for download below. Please feel free to use this data but kindly acknowledge Conus/CBC Staff Selection when you do so.
Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend QLD – Nov 2019
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series