Employment remains weak

ABS Labour Force for August is out and shows further weakness:

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

Employment decreased 10,800 (0.1%) to 11,637,100. Full-time employment decreased 2,600 to 8,128,800 and part-time employment decreased 8,200 to 3,508,300.

Unemployment increased 9,400 (1.3%) to 714,100. The number of persons looking for full-time work decreased 2,300 to 516,300 and the number of persons looking for part-time work increased 11,700 to 197,800.

The unemployment rate increased 0.1 pts to 5.8%.

The participation rate decreased 0.1 pts to 65.0%.

Aggregate monthly hours worked increased 1.1 million hours to 1,650.0 million hours.

This was a big miss for consensus which for some reason expected 10k jobs to be created.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.