Weekly Payrolls Data shows QLD +0.9% m/m while VIC is down 1.5% m/m

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Pete Faulkner - Cairns, COVID-19, Jobs, NSW, QLD, Uncategorized, VIC

The divergence between those states enjoying a better health outcomes and those not has become clearer with the release this morning of the ABS Weekly Payrolls data to July 25th (sourced from the ATO Single Touch Payroll system). While payrolls fell 0.1% m/m across Australia, QLD saw a 0.9% increase. In Victoria payrolls fell 1.5% while NSW registered a more modest 0.3% drop.

If we also convert the monthly Labour Force Survey employment data to an index on the same basis as the Payrolls data (as we have done for Australia and QLD in the chart above) this suggests that we might expect to see a broadly unchanged employment number for Australia when we get the July numbers later this week. In Queensland we could expect an increase of about 20-30K for July.

At the regional level the data is somewhat delayed, with Payrolls data currently only available to July 11th. This shows Payrolls in Cairns SA4 have recovered significantly from their April lows but are only slightly higher (+0.3%) from early June. If the improvement seen across Queensland in the past 2 weeks is reflected in Cairns then we can anticipate a slightly firmer Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend employment result (possibly up 500) when we get the July data next week.