ABS report: Full-time employment remains steady in November

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Image credit: freedigitalphotos user: by jscreationzs

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released its latest report on Australia’s employment trends which showed that the monthly full-time employment trend remained largely unchanged in November.

Image credit: freedigitalphotos
user: by jscreationzs

According to ABS’ report, total trend employment increased by 3,100 persons to 11,949,300 persons in November 2016, reflecting an increase in part-time employment of 3,200 persons and a small decrease of 100 persons working full-time.

“Over the past year we have seen a shift towards part-time employment, particularly in the first half of 2016,”said the General Manager of ABS’ Macroeconomic Statistics Division, Bruce Hockman.

“There are now around 138,300 more people working part-time than there were a year ago, and around 51,000 fewer people working full-time.”

Findings of the report reveal that the trend unemployment rate remained steady at 5.6% for the second consecutive month, having fallen over the past two years from 6.2% in November 2014.

The trend participation rate remained unchanged at 64.5%.

The report also found that the trend monthly hours worked increased by 0.8 million hours (0.1%), with decreases in total hours worked by full-time workers and an increase in hours worked by part-time workers.

According to Mr Hockman, the quarterly trend underemployment rate remained at 8.5% for a third successive quarter.

“The underemployment rate is still at a historically high level for Australia, but has been relatively unchanged over the past two years,” he added.

Numbers revealed that the seasonally adjusted number of persons employed increased by 39,100 in November. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased by 0.1% to 5.7%, while the seasonally adjusted labour force participation rate increased by 0.2% to 64.6%.