SEPTEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Aug 19	Sep 19	Aug 19 to Sep 19	Sep 18 to Sep 19
Trend
	Employed people ('000)	12,922.5	12,942.8	20.2	2.4%
	Unemployed people ('000)	716.4	718.0	1.6	4.7%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.3	5.3	0.0 pts	0.1 pts
	Underemployment rate (%)	8.4	8.4	0.0 pts	0.1 pts
	Participation rate (%)	66.2	66.2	0.0 pts	0.6 pts
	Monthly hours worked in all jobs ('000 000)	1,781.0	1,783.7	2.7	1.8%
Seasonally Adjusted
	Employed people ('000)	12,929.3	12,944.0	14.7	2.5%
	Unemployed people ('000)	717.7	709.6	-8.1	6.6%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.3	5.2	-0.1 pts	0.2 pts
	Underemployment rate (%)	8.5	8.3	-0.2 pts	0.0 pts
	Participation rate (%)	66.2	66.1	-0.1 pts	0.7 pts
	Monthly hours worked in all jobs ('000 000)	1,783.2	1,787.3	4.1	1.9%

EMPLOYED PEOPLE


UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

SEPTEMBER KEY POINTS

TREND ESTIMATES

• Employment increased by 20,200 to 12,942,800 people. Full-time employment increased by 9,000 to 8,840,200 people and part-time employment increased by 11,300 to 4,102,600 people.
• Unemployment increased by 1,600 to 718,000 people.
• Unemployment rate remained steady at 5.3%.
• Participation rate remained steady at 66.2%.
• Monthly hours worked in all jobs increased by 2.7 million hours to 1,783.7 million hours.

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES

• Employment increased by 14,700 to 12,944,000 people. Full-time employment increased by 26,200 to 8,847,200 people and part-time employment decreased by 11,400 to 4,096,900 people.
• Unemployment decreased by 8,100 to 709,600 people.
• Unemployment rate decreased by 0.1 pts to 5.2%.
• Participation rate decreased by 0.1 pts to 66.1%.
• Monthly hours worked in all jobs increased by 4.1 million hours to 1,787.3 million hours.

LABOUR UNDERUTILISATION

• The monthly trend underemployment rate remained steady at 8.4%. The monthly underutilisation rate remained steady at 13.7%.
• The monthly seasonally adjusted underemployment rate decreased by 0.2 pts to 8.3%. The monthly underutilisation rate decreased by 0.2 pts to 13.5%.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

Issue	Release Date
October 2019	14 November 2019
November 2019	19 December 2019
December 2019	23 January 2020
January 2020	20 February 2020
February 2020	19 March 2020
March 2020	16 April 2020

BUSHFIRES IN SEPTEMBER

Bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland resulted in minor disruption to data collection activities during September 2019. In many cases data could still be collected during the latter stages of the period. Quality assurance undertaken by the ABS confirmed that these disruptions did not result in any notable impacts to Labour Force statistics.

ROUNDING

Estimates of changes in the commentary have been calculated using un-rounded estimates, and may be different from, but are more accurate than, movement obtained from the rounded estimates. Graphs also depict un-rounded estimates.

SAMPLING ERROR

The estimates in this publication are based on a sample survey. Published estimates and movements are subject to sampling variability. Standard errors give a measure of sampling variability. The interval bounded by two standard errors is the 95% confidence interval, which provides a way of looking at the variability inherent in estimates. There is a 95% chance that the true value of the estimate lies within that interval.

	Monthly change		95% Confidence interval
Total Employment	14 700		-46 500	to	75 900
Total Unemployment	-8 100		-45 100	to	28 900
Unemployment rate	-0.1 pts		-0.3 pts	to	0.1 pts
Participation rate	-0.1 pts		-0.5 pts	to	0.3 pts

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, email client.services@abs.gov.au or contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.