Australia’s headline unemployment rate was 4 per cent in May, down 0.1 percentage points from April.
The unemployment rate declined slightly because employment rose by 40,000 people in May, and the number of officially unemployed people fell by 9,000.
The Bureau of Statistics says in April there had been more unemployed people than usual who were waiting to start work, so some of the fall in unemployment in May, and some of the rise in employment, reflected those people finally starting work.
The participation rate remained steady, at 66.8 per cent, and the employment-to-population ratio also remained steady, at 64.1 per cent.
However, data show the “trend” unemployment rate — which looks through the more volatile seasonally adjusted monthly figure — picked up slightly in May, from 3.9 per cent to 4 per cent.
It is the highest the trend unemployment rate has been since the ABS decided to re-introduce the trend series data in April 2022, having abandoned it during the extremely volatile pandemic and lockdown period for methodological reasons.
Loading
Posted , updated