APRIL KEY FIGURES

		Mar 2009	Apr 2009	Mar 09 to Apr 09		Apr 08 to Apr 09
Trend
	Employed persons ('000)	10 794.9	10 790.6	-4.3		0.3	%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	611.1	630.8	19.8		36.4	%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.4	5.5	0.2	pts	1.4	pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.4	65.5	0.0	pts	0.0	pts
Seasonally Adjusted
	Employed persons ('000)	10 771.6	10 798.9	27.3		0.1	%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	649.9	614.6	-35.3		30.9	%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.7	5.4	-0.3	pts	1.2	pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.5	65.4	-0.1	pts	-0.2	pts

Employed Persons

Unemployment rate

APRIL KEY POINTS


TREND ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

• EMPLOYMENT decreased to 10,790,600
• UNEMPLOYMENT increased to 630,800
• UNEMPLOYMENT RATE increased to 5.5%
• PARTICIPATION RATE increased to 65.5%

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

EMPLOYMENT

• increased by 27,300 to 10,798,900. Full-time employment increased by 49,100 to 7,672,700 and part-time employment decreased by 21,800 to 3,126,200.

UNEMPLOYMENT

• decreased by 35,300 to 614,600. The number of persons looking for full-time work decreased by 17,800 to 443,500 and the number of persons looking for part-time work decreased by 17,400 to 171,100.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

• decreased by 0.3 percentage points to 5.4%. The male unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points to 5.5%, and the female unemployment rate decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 5.3%.

PARTICIPATION RATE

• decreased by 0.1 percentage point to 65.4%.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
May 2009	11 June 2009
June 2009	9 July 2009
July 2009	6 August 2009
August 2009	10 September 2009
September 2009	8 October 2009
October 2009	12 November 2009

CHANGES THIS MONTH

This issue of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0) includes gross flows figures in Table 17 and, on the website, detailed data are available in the data cube GM1 - Labour Force Status and Gross Changes (flows) by Sex, State, Age.

For further information, see the article Understanding movements in employment, in the March 2009 issue of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0).


HISTORICAL TIMESERIES

The second issue of Labour Force Historical Timeseries, Australia (cat. no. 6204.0.55.001), released on 4 May 2009, contains spreadsheets and data cubes with superseded Industry, Occupation and Regional classifications from the monthly and quarterly Labour Force Survey (LFS) publications.

Further information is provided in the March 2009 issue of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0).


SAMPLING ERRORS

The estimates in this publication are based on a sample survey. Because the entire population is not enumerated, the published estimates and the movements derived from them are subject to sampling variability. Standard errors give a measure of this variability and appear on pages 29 and 30.

The 95% confidence intervals below provide another way of looking at the variability inherent in estimates from sample surveys. The interval bounded by the two limits is the 95% confidence interval, which represents a 95% chance that the true value of the estimate lies within that interval.

Movements in seasonally adjusted series between March and April 2009
	Monthly change	95% Confidence interval
Total Employment	27 300	-33 300	to	87 900
Total Unemployment	-35 300	-73 500	to	2 900
Unemployment rate	-0.3 pts	-0.7 pts	to	0.1 pt
Participation rate	-0.1 pt	-0.5 pts	to	0.3 pts

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070 or Mary Piechowski on Canberra (02) 6252 6525.