Cairns Post gets confused on youth unemployment

In today’s Cairns Post Nick Dalton has a piece about youth unemployment in Cairns. Although we are gratified to discover that Nick is actually reading this blog, it appears that he is still somewhat confused about the actual data. Nick says “Last month youth unemployment was 21.8 per cent, according to the …read more

QLD and Cairns jobs data show real improvements

We have today returned from a trip up to Cape York and have now had time to look at the employment data for May released during our absence.The data for QLD showed a decline in the headline unemployment rate to 6.2% (from 6.3%) with a very encouraging increase of 18,200 …read more

Gavin King Fact Check

“Building approvals, tourism figures, unemployment rate, real estate market, private sector investment…all much stronger now than at any point of the past five years under the former Labor Government.” So says Member for Cairns Gavin King on his Facebook page referring to a speech he made in parliament on May …read more

Aquis and its impact on Cairns labour market

There is much talk in the media about the potential jobs impact if/when the Aquis integrated-resort goes ahead north of Cairns. The company’s statements talk of 3,750 jobs in the construction phase rising to about 11,000 when fully operational in 2018. To put these numbers in some context let’s just …read more

Cairns Post and more nonsense

A piece in today’s Cairns Post leaves us scratching our head, thinking “where do they get this stuff from?”. Without quoting any sources it makes it hard to know where Peter Michael (a Nick Dalton apprentice perhaps?) gets his information from; what we can say is that none of it is correct.So …read more

Big improvement in Cairns jobs data

The release of ABS regional jobs data this morning has (finally) seen a marked improvement in the picture in Cairns. After very weak data last month (see here for details), it is certainly encouraging to see the data looking a lot better. The recent deterioration in the data for Cairns has …read more

Cairns Youth Unemployment also improving

As we noted last month (see here) the situation for youth unemployment in Cairns has been showing slow but steady improvements. That trend has continued in April. The headline (absurdly volatile) unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 24 has fallen to 18.1% (from 20.8%). The Brotherhood of St Laurence’s …read more

Once again..strong jobs data; but QLD still lags

For the 4th consecutive month the Australian jobs market has grown strongly in April with the headline unemployment rate unchanged at 5.8% (despite market expectations of a reversal of last months decline with a move to 5.9%). On seasonally adjusted terms, we added 14,200 new jobs (all of which were …read more

Unspinning the QLD jobs numbers

As we noted earlier today, there are some positives to take away from the ABS labour force data for QLD. The LNP are now sharing social media pictures which spruik the “over 64,000 jobs” that have been created in QLD since the election of the Newman Government. That’s perfectly true, but …read more

AUS versus US unemployment rates

The weekend news that the US unemployment rate has fallen to 6.3% in April came as a shock to the markets. As did the news a few weeks ago that the rate in March in Australia had fallen to 5.8%. Looking past the surprising (and likely to be reversed) decline …read more

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