If you believe the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there was a massive surge in employment and a huge fall in the unemployment rate in October. Maybe it was the Turnbull Effect, with the removal of those twin millstones Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey so delighting the nation’s employers they immediately embarked on a truly extraordinary hiring spree. Or maybe the ABS’ jobs numbers really aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
The ABS data shows more than 58,000 new jobs were created in October, seasonally adjusted, and the jobless rate dipped under 6% to 5.9% for the first time since May, 2014. The outcome is much, much stronger than any forecast, which was for between 10,000 and 20,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate remaining steady on 6.2%. September’s original reported figure of a loss of 5100 jobs was revised upwards to a loss of just 800 jobs, although that’s nothing in a labour market of more than 11.8 million people. The number of hours worked last month jumped a seasonally adjusted 1.2%, a strong rise, to 1.66 billion hours. Most of the nearly-60,000 new jobs were full time.
Victoria had a scarcely believable fall from 6.3% to 5.6% unemployment, seasonally adjusted, while NSW fell a comparatively tame 0.3 points to 5.5%. The west, however, rose from 6.1% to 6.4%, while Queensland edged downward — 0.1 of a point to 6.2%.
The trend series, which smooths out monthly fluctuations, also showed a strong rise of 40,000, which was one of the largest seen for any month for a while, but the trend unemployment rate remained steady on 6.1%. The seasonally adjusted participation rate rose 0.1% to 65.0%, the same as the trend participation rate which didn’t rise in the month.
The ABS itself seemed to give credence to the view that the seasonally adjusted numbers aren’t to be entirely relied on, strongly emphasising the trend numbers in its media release. “Trend employment has increased by 260,500 since October 2014, contributing to an increased employment-to-population ratio over the year from 60.6 per cent to 61.1 per cent,” the bureau said. “The trend unemployment rate has remained relatively stable over the year, decreasing from 6.2 per cent to 6.1 per cent.”
Regardless of whether the numbers are reliable or not, they saw the Aussie dollar jump 1% to around 71.23 US cents — a real enough consequence for exporters and import-competing local firms.
These numbers can’t be real.
The ABS recently changed their method of measuring unemployment. They didn’t check it for accuracy by concurrently employing their old method with the new method for a couple of quarters.
I think these results show that was a mistake.
“58,000 new jobs were created…”
You mean “58,000 jobs were created.” If they were created, then they’re new! Grr.
I’m sure we’ll find that there’s a mistake … like someone forgot to do the seasonal adjustment?
I think these results show that was a mistake.
That depends on what the objective was.
12 months ago BK and his sidekick GD would have been lecturing us that these numbers showed how good the economy was going and the rampaging dollar was exactly what we needed. How times change. Oh well only 10 months to go until his hero down at Martin Place retires to his happy clappy church down at the Shire to play guitar – well at least when he’s not having a good old feed at the lecture circuit trough.