JANUARY KEY FIGURES

		Dec 2010	Jan 2011	Dec 10 to Jan 11		Jan 10 to Jan 11
Trend
	Employed persons ('000)	11 421.2	11 442.8	21.6		3.2	%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	615.3	610.3	-5.0		-4.0	%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.1	5.1	0.0	pts	-0.4	pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.9	66.0	0.0	pts	0.6	pts
Seasonally Adjusted
	Employed persons ('000)	11 417.5	11 441.5	24.0		3.0	%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	597.6	606.5	8.9		-1.9	%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.0	5.0	0.1	pts	-0.2	pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.8	65.9	0.1	pts	0.5	pts

Employed Persons

Unemployment Rate

JANUARY KEY POINTS


TREND ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

• Employment increased to 11,442,800
• Unemployment decreased to 610,300
• Unemployment rate at 5.1%
• Participation rate at 66.0%
• Aggregate monthly hours worked increased to 1,600.0 million hours

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES (MONTHLY CHANGE)

• Employment increased 24,000 to 11,441,500. Full-time employment decreased 8,000 to 8,022,400 and part-time employment increased 32,000 to 3,419,100.
• Unemployment increased 8,900 (1.5%) to 606,500. The number of persons looking for full-time work increased 900 to 426,800 and the number of persons looking for part-time work increased 8,000 to 179,700.
• Unemployment rate at 5.0%. The male unemployment rate at 4.7% and the female unemployment rate increased 0.1 pts to 5.4%.
• Participation rate increased 0.1 pts to 65.9%.
• Aggregate monthly hours worked decreased 12.7 million hours to 1,584.4 million hours.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
February 2011	10 March 2011
March 2011	7 April 2011
April 2011	12 May 2011
May 2011	9 June 2011
June 2011	7 July 2011
July 2011	11 August 2011

IMPACT OF THE FLOODS

Refer to the article Impact of the floods on the Labour Force Survey in this issue (page 3).


CHANGES THIS MONTH

This issue of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0) includes new measures of aggregate monthly hours worked by state and territory. These measures are included in publication Table 19 and the quarterly labour force underutilisation rates are included in Tables 20 and 21.

Detailed data are available on the website in a time series spreadsheet. Aggregate monthly hours worked by state and territory is released in Table 20. The quarterly measure of aggregate monthly hours worked by industry sector has been moved to Table 21 and labour force underutilisation rates, classified by age and state, are included in Tables 22 and 23.

For further information, refer to the article titled Aggregate monthly hours worked by state and territory in the December 2010 issue of this publication.


FORTHCOMING CHANGES

The ABS will be revising historical labour force estimates for the period November 1984 to August 1997 due to ongoing commitments to coherence and accuracy. The revisions will be applied in the February 2011 issue of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0), to be released on 10 March 2011. The revisions will mainly affect employment by industry estimates. Details of these amendments will be provided in Information Paper: Revisions to Historical ANZSIC Industry Data (cat. no. 6259.0), to be released on 25 February 2011.


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 Labour Force on Canberra (02) 6252 6525, email labourforce@abs.gov.au.