Australia’s unemployment rate has risen in October as a result of widespread coronavirus lockdowns.
The official figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show the national jobless rate for October was 5.2 per cent, up from 4.6 per cent in September.
According to labour force data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Thursday, the number of employed Australians fell by 46,300, with 40,400 full-time and 5,900 part-time jobs lost between September and October.
There was also a fall of 1 million in the number of hours worked.
The underemployment rate, which measures the portion of employed people who are not working as many hours as they like, rose from 9.2 per cent to a 12-month high of 9.5 per cent.
Key statistics
Seasonally adjusted estimates for October 2021:
- Unemployment rate increased to 5.2%.
- Participation rate increased to 64.7%.
- Employment decreased to 12,835,200.
- Employment to population ratio decreased to 61.3%.
- Underemployment rate increased to 9.5%.
- Monthly hours worked decreased by 1 million hours.
“The latest data covered the period from 26 September to 9 October,” Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at the ABS said in the release. “This included school holidays and some early changes to restrictions associated with the Delta lockdowns, particularly in New South Wales, ahead of larger changes from mid-October,” it added.
“As we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, the changes in the labour markets with lockdowns continued to have a large influence on the national figures,” Mr Jarvis said.
“The increases in unemployment show that people were preparing to get back to work, and increasingly available and actively looking for work – particularly in New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. This follows what we have seen towards the end of other major lockdowns, including the one in Victoria late last year,” Mr Jarvis said.
“It may seem counterintuitive for unemployment to rise as conditions are about to improve. However, this shows how unusual lockdowns are, compared with other economic shocks, in how they limit being able to work and look for work.”
The relatively large increases in unemployment in these three jurisdictions resulted in large increases in their unemployment rates, rising 0.8 percentage points in New South Wales (to 5.4 per cent), 0.9 percentage points in Victoria (to 5.6 per cent) and 2.5 percentage points in the Australian Capital Territory (to 6.6 per cent).
Unemployment also increased in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, but fell in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
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