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The November labour force data from the ABS will have provided just a touch of Xmas cheer in Canberra, Brisbane and Martin Place. The headline, seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dipped to 5.2% (from 5.3%) while employment lifted 39,900 (much better than the anticipated +15,000), although we should note that Oct’s employment decline was revised froma 19,000 fall to a decline of 24,800 which takes some gloss off the Nov number. The Trend series (which is less volatile but preferred by us and the RBA) showed employment lifted 17,400 and the unemployment rate dipped to 5.2%. The pace of Trend employment growth has eased slightly from 2.2% in Nov to 2.1% this month.
In Queensland there was also some resaons for seasonal merriment. Seasonally adjusted employment grew by 17,300 and the unemployment rate dropped to 6.3% (Oct was also revised down from 6.5% to 6.4%). The Trend series showed an additional 6,400 employed and the unemployment rate stable at 6.4%. However, the rate of Trend employment growth in QLD has picked up and is now 2.5% (after Oct was revised from 2.1% to 2.4%).
One of our favourite neasures of labour market health is hours worked per capita of working age population. Here we see the measure in Australia was stable at 86.1 hrs while in Queensland it fell slightly to 86.4 hrs.
The ABS will be releasing their original regional labour market data on Monday next week at which point we will be updating the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend data along with the Conus Regional Industry Employment Trend for the Nov quarter.
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series