As summarised earlier, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released its labour force report for April, which registered an unprecedented 594,300 decrease in total employment but only a 1% rise in the headline unemployment rate (from 5.5% to 6.2%) due to a collapse in the participation rate:
Again, total employment collapsed by a seasonally adjusted 594,300 to 12,418,700. Full-time jobs fell by 220,500, whereas part-time employment fell by 373,800:
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The participation rate dived by 2.4% to 63.5%, which is why the unemployment rate only rose by 1.0%:
