MARCH KEY FIGURES

		Feb 2010	Mar 2010	Feb 10 to Mar 10		Mar 09 to Mar 10
Trend
	Employed persons ('000)	10 972.6	10 991.9	19.3		2.0	%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	616.5	611.0	-5.6		-1.8	%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.3	5.3	-0.1	pts	-0.2	pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.2	65.2	0.0	pts	-0.2	pts
Seasonally Adjusted
	Employed persons ('000)	10 968.7	10 988.3	19.6		2.1	%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	614.9	619.1	4.2		-4.7	%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.3	5.3	0.0	pts	-0.4	pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.2	65.1	0.0	pts	-0.3	pts

Employed Persons

Unemployment rate

MARCH KEY POINTS


TREND ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

• Employment increased to 10,991,900
• Unemployment decreased to 611,000
• Unemployment rate at 5.3%
• Participation rate remained at 65.2%
• Aggregate monthly hours worked increased to 1,540.5 million hours

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

• Employment increased 19,600 (0.2%) to 10,988,300. Full-time employment increased 30,100 to 7,691,200 and part-time employment decreased 10,600 to 3,297,100.
• Unemployment increased 4,200 (0.7%) to 619,100. The number of persons looking for full-time work decreased 3,800 to 442,000 and the number of persons looking for part-time work increased 8,000 to 177,100.
• Unemployment rate remained at 5.3%. The male unemployment rate remained at 5.4% and the female unemployment rate at 5.3%.
• Participation rate at 65.1%.
• Aggregate monthly hours worked decreased 10.0 million hours (0.6%) to 1,541.2 million hours.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
April 2010	13 May 2010
May 2010	10 June 2010
June 2010	8 July 2010
July 2010	12 August 2010
August 2010	9 September 2010
September 2010	7 October 2010

CHANGES THIS MONTH

This issue introduces the quarterly seasonally adjusted measure of aggregate monthly hours worked by industry sector. A new time series spreadsheet will be released on the ABS web site as Table 20. Quarter measure of aggregate monthly hours worked by Industry Sector - Seasonally adjusted. The existing tables: Table 20. Labour underutilisation by Age and Sex - Trend, Seasonally adjusted and Original; and Table 21. Labour underutilisation by State and Sex - Trend, Seasonally adjusted and Original; have been renumbered to Table 21 and Table 22 respectively. See article Expansion of aggregate monthly hours worked in the January 2010 issue of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0).


ROUNDING

Estimates of monthly change shown on the front cover have been calculated using unrounded estimates, and may be different from, but are more accurate than, movements obtained from the rounded estimates. The graphs on the front cover also depict unrounded estimates.


SAMPLING ERROR

The estimates in this publication are based on a sample survey. Therefore, published estimates and the movements derived from them are subject to sampling variability. Standard errors give a measure of this variability, see pages 34 and 35. The interval bounded by two standard errors is the 95% confidence interval, which provides a way of looking at the variability inherent in estimates. This represents a 95% chance that the true value of the estimate lies within that interval.

Movements in seasonally adjusted series between February 2010 and March 2010
	Monthly change	95% Confidence interval
Total Employment	19 600	-33 800	to	73 000
Total Unemployment	4 200	-29 000	to	37 400
Unemployment rate	0.0 pts	-0.2 pts	to	0.2 pts
Participation rate	0.0 pts	-0.4 pts	to	0.4 pts

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070, email client.services@abs.gov.au or Steve Wood on Canberra (02) 6252 6525, email labourforce@abs.gov.au.