MAY KEY FIGURES

		Apr 19	May 19	Apr 19 to May 19	May 18 to May 19
Trend
	Employed persons ('000)	12,828.2	12,856.6	28.4	2.7%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	689.4	695.2	5.8	-3.5%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.1	5.1	0.0 pts	-0.3 pts
	Underemployment rate (%)	8.4	8.5	0.1 pts	0.0 pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.8	65.9	0.1 pts	0.4 pts
	Monthly hours worked in all jobs ('000 000)	1,778.8	1,782.1	3.3	2.5%
Seasonally Adjusted
	Employed persons ('000)	12,826.0	12,868.2	42.3	2.9%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	707.0	704.7	-2.4	-1.0%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.2	5.2	0.0 pts	-0.2 pts
	Underemployment rate (%)	8.5	8.6	0.1 pts	0.1 pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.9	66.0	0.1 pts	0.6 pts
	Monthly hours worked in all jobs ('000 000)	1,780.9	1,775.0	-5.9	2.1%

MAY KEY POINTS

TREND ESTIMATES

• Employment increased 28,400 to 12,856,600 persons. Full-time employment increased 13,900 to 8,799,800 persons and part-time employment increased 14,500 to 4,056,800 persons.
• Unemployment increased 5,800 to 695,200 persons.
• Unemployment rate remained steady at 5.1%.
• Participation rate increased 0.1 pts to 65.9%.
• Monthly hours worked in all jobs increased 3.3 million hours to 1,782.1 million hours.

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES

• Employment increased 42,300 to 12,868,200 persons. Full-time employment increased 2,400 to 8,792,900 persons and part-time employment increased 39,800 to 4,075,400 persons.
• Unemployment decreased 2,400 to 704,700 persons.
• Unemployment rate remained steady at 5.2%.
• Participation rate increased 0.1 pts to 66.0%.
• Monthly hours worked in all jobs decreased 5.9 million hours to 1,775.0 million hours.

LABOUR UNDERUTILISATION

• The monthly trend underemployment rate increased 0.1 pts to 8.5%. The monthly underutilisation rate increased 0.1 pts to 13.6%.
• The monthly seasonally adjusted underemployment rate increased 0.1 pts to 8.6%. The monthly underutilisation rate remained steady at 13.7%.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

Issue	Release Date
June 2019	18 July 2019
July 2019	15 August 2019
August 2019	19 September 2019
September 2019	17 October 2019
October 2019	14 November 2019
November 2019	19 December 2019

UPDATE ON QUARTERLY REBENCHMARKING

The ABS has revised the original Labour Force series for the previous 19 months to reflect the latest available preliminary and final estimates of Estimated Resident Population. This process ensures that the Labour Force series promptly reflects any change in population trends and minimises the size of revisions that can occur when the series are rebenchmarked following each Census of Population and Housing. It is expected that, on most occasions, the quarterly revisions will not be significant.

For further information about rebenchmarking, refer to the "Rebenchmarking Labour Force Estimates" article published in the February 2015 issue of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0).


UPDATE ON THE RELEASE OF 6224.0.55.001

The ABS was due to release the Labour Force, Australia: Labour Force Status and Other Characteristics of Families (cat. no. 6224.0.55.001) on 27 September 2018, with annual data up to June 2018.

During the quality assurance of the 2018 data and the recent time series, the ABS identified that there was a greater level of variability in the weighted estimates for some of the less common family and household types (particularly multi-family households), and therefore opted to delay the release to 2019.

The ABS has identified an issue with some family coding, which is affecting a range of key family estimates - particularly changes between June 2015 and June 2017. The issue is also impacting, to a lesser extent, on some variables in the four "relationship in household" products in Labour Force, Australia, Detailed – Electronic Delivery (cat. no. 6291.0.55.001) – including pivot tables FM1-FM4, as well as the first time series spreadsheet in that release, which contains estimates by social marital status.

The 2019 publication will contain data for both June 2018 and June 2019. Revised data for the 2015-2017 period, will be released with a complete time series with the release of June 2020 data. The ABS apologises for this delay. Should you have any question regarding this data, please contact us at labour.statistics@abs.gov.au


ROUNDING

Estimates of changes in the commentary have been calculated using unrounded estimates, and may be different from, but are more accurate than, movement obtained from the rounded estimates. Graphs also depict unrounded 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	42 300		-18 900	to	103 500
Total Unemployment	-2 400		-39 400	to	34 600
Unemployment rate	0.0 pts		-0.2 pts	to	0.2 pts
Participation rate	0.1 pts		-0.3 pts	to	0.5 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.