Small Area Labour Market data for March

The Dept of Employment SALM data (Small Area Labour Market) is the only official data that provides a look at the labour markets at Local Govt and SA2 level. Although there are limitations to the data (not least of which is that it is only quarterly) it does provide us …read more

Updating our model with the new JobKeeper 2.0 impacts

Last week the Govt confirmed the details of the JobKeeper extension (JK 2.0) which will be in place when the original JobKeeper (JK 1.0) expires at the end of Sept. Details are available at the Treasury website. Essentially for a business to be eligible for JK 2.0, from October to …read more

Regional labour force shows improvement in June

In common with the national and State data seen last week (see here for details) the regional data for June shows an improvement across many regions. The Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend shows a similar story panning out across both Greater Brisbane and the Rest of QLD. In Greater Brisbane Trend …read more

Cairns jobs are recovering….but still well below national average

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

Regional data for May shows Greater Brisbane being hit slightly harder than the Rest of Queensland

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

JobSeeker data for May shows another 22% increase. Over 1.6 million people claiming.

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

Regional Building Approvals for April

The release of the ABS original regional building approvals data allows us to update our Conus Trend series for April. Lats week we saw nationwide Trend approvals up 3.9% for the year while Queensland registered a 6.4% decline. Today’s data allows us to see that Greater Brisbane approvals fell 8.7% …read more

Labour Account; hours worked fall, incomes growth slows. Regions do worse (again)

Today’s release of the March 2020 quarter Labour Account data series provides a wealth of information. One thing it allows us to do is take a  look at incomes across various industry sectors and how they have changed in the past 12 months. The data provides us, for each industry …read more

Participation changes across Queensland

There has been a lot written about the fact that the Participation Rates across Australia fell sharply as the effects of the COVID-19 lock-down took effect. These falls at national, state and regional level had the effect of suppressing the anticipated rises in the unemployment rates. Participation rates, prior to …read more

Cairns region has been in recession since the end of 2019

Yesterday’s national GDP data (see here for commentary) showed that Australia is in recession; first quarter GDP fell 0.3% qq and, as is abundantly clear, the second quarter data will show a further significant decline (our projection is for a 8.7% qq fall). This national data, combined with the recent …read more

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