The effect of Melbourne’s lockdown on employment

As Melbourne’s lockdown starts to ease the August regional employment data released on Thursday (when seen through the lens of the Conus Trend) clearly shows us the impact the restrictions have had when compared to the Rest of Victoria. Trend employment in Greater Melbourne has fallen 163,000 since March, or …read more

Trend unemployment rates fall across the QLD regions

Today’s release by the ABS of the monthly regional labour force data for August allows us to update the Conus/CBC Staff Selection data-sets for the Queensland regions. The strong data at the national and State level reported last week (see here for details) was reflected in generally better results across …read more

August Labour Force data much stronger than had been expected

The ABS Labour Force data for August has shown an unexpected jump in the number employed (up 111,000 versus expectations of a 40,000 fall, and a 4,500 upward revision to the July data) and a fall in the unemployment rate to 6.8% (from 7.5%). Participation was slightly higher and the …read more

QLD Public Sector employment data

The QLD Govt last week finally released their Public Sector employment data for March 2020 (which is to be now a biannual rather than quarterly release); this is the first such release since the June 2019 quarter results. It shows FTE employment across the State increased by 1.7% for the …read more

Payrolls data suggests there should be some improvement coming for Cairns

Today’s release from the ABS of the Payrolls data to the week ending 8th August suggests that we might expect some improvement in Cairns’ Conus/CBC Staff Selection series for August when released later next month. Payrolls data (sourced from the ATO’s Single Touch Payroll system) showed payrolls in the Cairns …read more

Trend unemployment lifts across QLD regions. Cairns hits 8.7%

Not surprisingly, given the poor State performance noted last week (see here for details), the labour markets across most of QLD have deteriorated in July according to the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend. The Trend unemployment rate, which sits at 8.8% in QLD, lifted to 8.7% in Greater Brisbane and 9.0% …read more

Employment up 110K+ again, but QLD does badly

The July Labour Force data from the ABS this morning showed employment had grown another 114,700 in the month. While the last 2 months have seen significant recovery we should not lose sight of the fact that employment remains more than 500,000 below where we started the year. Another sharp …read more

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

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. …read more

Melbourne lock-down means changes to JobKeeper even more restrictive; extra 260,000 may lose needed support

The lock-down now in place in Melbourne could see an additional 260,000 workers miss out on JobKeeper (JK) support due to the 2-quarters requirements of the new regime. On our pre-lock-down estimates we would have seen the JK 1.0 original 3.5 million figure drop to 2.0 million in Oct had …read more

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

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