Today’s June Labour Force data has provided something for everyone…and a big surprise for most. Expectations had been for employment to improve by about 100K in June with the unemployment rate either going up slightly, staying stable, or moving down slightly depending upon what you thought participation was going to …read more
Payrolls data from the ABS (sourced weekly from the ATO’s Single Touch Payroll system) shows that payrolls across the nation were down 5.7% by the 27th June from their levels in mid-March. Across Queensland the decline was slightly better at 5.2%. Data at the regional level at this stage is …read more
As the extreme impacts on a raft of economic data collected by them became clear the ABS, in many instances, have suspended the production of their Trend estimates. The reason the ABS have provided is along the lines of the following (which relates specifically to the Labour Force data but …read more
Last week we saw the data for residential Building Approvals from the ABS for May (see commentary here) which showed QLD approvals fell 14.8% y/y. Today the regional, original data from the ABS allows us to update our own Conus Trend. This shows approvals in Greater Brisbane were down 7.8% …read more
Tourism Research Australia have released their International and National Visitor Surveys for the year to March 2020 today (see here). This is the first of the quarterly data that will start to exhibit some of the COVID-19 related impacts. The pandemic began to affect travel from China early in 2020, …read more
Residential building approvals fell by 16.4% m/m and were down 11.6% y/y in May as large declines in unit approvals, particularly in NSW and Victoria took hold. Across the nation as a whole unit approvals fell almost 30% for the year while house approvals were marginally higher (+0.6%). In Queensland …read more
The ABS Industry Employment data out last week allows us to take a look to see where the axe has fallen in the months up to May in terms of job losses (see here for more detail on regional labour force). While losses were seen in almost all industry sectors …read more
The release today of the ABS original labour force data at the regional level allows us to update our Conus/CBC Staff Selection Regional Employment Trend series (please see the note at the start of a previous post regarding Trend data at a time of such high volatility). While employment has …read more
The Dept of Social Services today released the latest JobSeeker data for May. It shows the total of those claiming JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (other) has increased by another 21.8% since April with now 1,635,286 people claiming the benefits. This is up from 442,500 claiming the old Newstart and Youth …read more
Despite some encouraging Payrolls data from the ABS and ATO for May from earlier this week (about which we advised a good deal of caution..see here) today’s Labour Force data for May shows another substantial decline in the number employed and, perhaps surprisingly, another drop in participation. Note; The ABS …read more