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The latest ABS Labour Force release for March, combined with our Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend series, shows the Cairns labour market has continued the recovery that started late last year. Trend employment in Cairns rose to 145,730 people in March, up 1,980 (+1.4%) over the year, and the Trend unemployment rate has fallen to 4.2%, down from 4.6% a year ago and well below the August–September 2025 peak of 4.8%.
That puts Cairns below the National Trend unemployment rate of 4.3% (which was unchanged in March) for the first time in some while, although it remains slightly above the Queensland rate of just 4.0%. Cairns Trend employment growth of 1.4% over the year is a similar result to the State and National numbers.
It is worth noting that the Trend participation rate has eased a little to 67.2% from 67.5% a year ago, although it remains close to 14-year highs. Some of the improvement in the unemployment rate therefore reflects people stepping out of the labour force rather than into a job, and that is worth keeping an eye on. That said, the lift in Trend employment over the past six months (+2,050 persons since September) is real growth, not just a participation effect.
Readers may also see a 4.6% Cairns rate quoted from the QGSO regional brief. That figure is a 12-month moving average of the ABS modelled regional original data, and it is heavily lagged. It is still echoing the elevated unemployment from the middle of 2025. Our Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend series uses an X13ARIMA-SEATS Trend, benchmarked to the ABS Queensland Trend, which gives a much more current read of where the Cairns labour market is now.
You can download the full Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend data set here.
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series