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Economics update | 15 July 2022
14 Jul 2022
Number unemployed almost reaches job vacancy rates
The labour market has become extremely tight, with the latest ABS Labour force data showing unemployment down 0.4 percentage points to 3.5 per cent in June — its lowest level since August 1974. The number of unemployed people at 494,000 people is now only marginally higher than the level of job vacancies, at 480,000 in May. This gap is likely to narrow further when the June job vacancy data is released later this month.
A further 88,400 new jobs were added in June, raising the number of employed Australians to 13.6 million. Over the past year 438,000 people have entered the workforce, an increase of 3.3 per cent. Full time jobs have dominated the employment growth over the past year, with full-time employment increasing by 472,000 or up 5.2 per cent, while part-time employment has fallen by 34,500 or down 0.8 per cent.
The participation rate continued to grow, reaching a new high of 66.8 per cent, driven by an increase in female participation, up 0.2 percentage points to 62.5 per cent. However, female participation remains over 8 per cent below that of males, indicating there is scope to grow female participation rates to address the current labour shortages.
While hours worked remained unchanged at 1.81 billon hours, this is still a historic high.