There’s mixed but mostly good news in today’s unemployment data. While unemployment remained steady in trend terms, it increased marginally in seasonally-adjusted terms to 5.8%. That was mainly driven by a big rise in unemployment in NSW, up to 6.1% from 5.5%.

But the rise is NSW isn’t as bad as it looks — it was on the back of a 0.3% increase in the participation rate, meaning more people were looking for work, and the rise only returns NSW to where it was in August. As that suggests, in trend terms, NSW was flat. There was better news in Victoria, where the participation rate went up half a per cent but unemployment remained steady at 5.7%. Queensland fell 0.3% to 6.0%, South Australia from 5.7% to 5.3%, WA saw a very big fall, down 0.7% to 5.0%, albeit on the back of a small fall in the participation, rate and Tasmania was steady.

We’re continuing to see the same phenomenon of growth in part-time jobs — 21,500 new part-time jobs and only 2,900 full-time jobs. Underemployment is up across most age groups, and there was a small fall in hours worked. However the trend in hours worked suggests we may have hit bottom:

There’s undeniably good news, however, in relation to youth unemployment. There was a big fall in teen unemployment, down 0.8% in seasonally-adjusted terms to 15.5% (and down 0.3% in trend terms), despite a big increase in the participation rate.

In short there’s something for everyone. We look to be in the early stages of recovery from a recession that never really got going, so stimulus opponents will be able to criticise the Government (incidentally, why aren’t stimulus opponents like the Coalition attacking the Reserve Bank for failing to lift interest rates more quickly back to neutral settings?). But the Government will be able to point to NSW, the continuing underemployment numbers and the lack of a real boost in full-time jobs as evidence that the recovery remains tentative.

This is the way it’s been for a few months now and it’s probably the way it will be for another year as employers use their existing staff more rather than bring on new people, especially full-timers.