JULY KEY FIGURES

		Jun 2009	Jul 2009	Jun 09 to Jul 09		Jul 08 to Jul 09
Trend
	Employed persons ('000)	10 779.1	10 778.3	-0.8		-0.1	%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	664.1	670.5	6.4		40.6	%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.8	5.9	0.1	pts	1.6	pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.4	65.3	0.0	pts	-0.1	pts
Seasonally Adjusted
	Employed persons ('000)	10 761.4	10 793.6	32.2		0.0	%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	663.2	664.1	0.8		37.3	%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.8	5.8	0.0	pts	1.5	pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.3	65.3	0.1	pts	-0.1	pts

Employed Persons

Unemployment rate

JULY KEY POINTS


TREND ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

• EMPLOYMENT decreased to 10,778,300
• UNEMPLOYMENT increased to 670,500
• UNEMPLOYMENT RATE increased to 5.9%
• PARTICIPATION RATE decreased to 65.3%

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

EMPLOYMENT

• increased by 32,200 to 10,793,600. Full-time employment decreased by 16,000 to 7,590,400 and part-time employment increased by 48,200 to 3,203,200.

UNEMPLOYMENT

• increased by 800 to 664,100. The number of persons looking for full-time work decreased by 4,800 to 495,900 and the number of persons looking for part-time work increased by 5,600 to 168,200.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

• remained steady at 5.8%. The male unemployment rate increased 0.1 percentage point to 6.2%, and the female unemployment rate decreased 0.1 percentage point to 5.3%.

PARTICIPATION RATE

• increased 0.1 percentage point to 65.3%.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
August 2009	10 September 2009
September 2009	8 October 2009
October 2009	12 November 2009
November 2009	10 December 2009
December 2009	14 January 2010
January 2010	11 February 2010

INTRODUCTION OF NEW KEY MEASURES

The ABS will be introducing two new key measures into Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0) from the August 2009 issue, namely, a monthly measure: aggregate monthly hours worked, and a quarterly measure: labour force underutilisation rate. Refer to the article titled Aggregate monthly hours worked in this issue for further details on the hours worked measure and the May 2009 issue of this publication for details on the labour force underutilisation rate measure.


SAMPLE RE-INSTATEMENT

On 13 May 2009, the Australian Statistician announced the full re-instatement of the Labour Force Survey sample. The re-instatement will occur over four reference months, from September to December 2009. The December 2009 estimates, released in January 2010, will be the first under the fully re-instated sample. The reversal of the 24% reduction in sample size is expected to decrease standard errors by approximately 15%.


ROUNDING

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


SAMPLING ERRORS

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 31 and 32.

The interval bounded by the two limits is the 95% confidence interval, which provides another 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 June 2009 and July 2009
	Monthly change	95% Confidence interval
Total Employment	32 200	-28 400	to	92 800
Total Unemployment	800	-36 200	to	37 800
Unemployment rate	0.0 pts	-0.4 pts	to	0.4 pts
Participation rate	0.1 pts	-0.3 pts	to	0.5 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 Mary Piechowski on Canberra (02) 6252 6525, email <labourforce@abs.gov.au>.