Roy Morgan has released its labour force estimates for July, which show that Australia’s unemployment rate fell to 9.1% in July (from 10.3% in June), while the underemployment rate rose to 9.5% in July (from 9.3% in June).
Over the year, the unemployment rate was 0.6% higher than a year earlier (8.5%), whereas the underemployment rate was 0.9% higher over the year (up from 8.6%):
Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan, says record levels of immigration are now the key influence on the nation’s housing market:
“We have highlighted for months now that there’s been a rapid increase in the Australian population over the last year, a record increase of 672,000, and this has flowed through into a rapidly expanding labour market. The Australian workforce increased by 475,000 compared to July last year”.
“However, although there have been many new jobs created compared to a year ago, the rapid workforce growth has outpaced the economy’s job creation as we deal with high inflation and rising interest rates”.
“Overall employment is up 340,000 compared to a year ago while unemployment has increased by 135,000”.
So basically, lots of jobs are being created, but not enough to soak up the huge volume of workers arriving through mass immigration.
SEEK’s employment data is telling a similar story, with the pipeline of job ads shrinking and the number of applicants per job ads returning to pre-pandemic levels:
Rapidly rising labour supply and a slowing economy are a recipe for rising unemployment.
