Standard seasonal rise in payroll jobs in February

Media Release

Released

14/03/2024

Source

Weekly Payroll Jobs, Week ending 17 February 2024

Payroll jobs rose 2.0 per cent in the month to 17 February 2024, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labour statistics, said: “The rise in payroll jobs between mid-January and mid-February 2024 followed the regular seasonal pattern of business activity increasing as people return to work after their summer break.

“The growth in payroll jobs from mid-January to mid-February in 2024 was broadly consistent with what we've seen at this time of the year since 2020. The seasonal contribution from Education and training jobs is always strong at this time of year, even through the COVID-19 pandemic, and which we again saw this year.”

Monthly percentage change from mid-January to mid-February 2020 to 2024
	mid-Feb month (%)
2020	2.6
2021	2.1
2022	1.7
2023	2.5
2024	2.0

Monthly percentage change from mid-January to mid-February 2020 to 2024

["","mid-Feb month"]

[["2020","2021","2022","2023","2024"],[[2.5899999999999999],[2.0499999999999998],[1.6599999999999999],[2.4900000000000002],[2.0299999999999998]]]

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Mid-Feb represents the week ending 15 February 2020, 20 February 2021, 19 February 2022, 18 February 2023 and 17 February 2024.

“We continue to see lower annual growth in payroll jobs through 2023-24 than through 2022-23, consistent with our other labour market indicators.

“However, it's also important to remember that this slower rise follows a particularly strong period of growth through 2022-23,” said Mr Jarvis.

Payroll jobs, year on year comparison
	2020-21 (pts)	2021-22 (pts)	2022-23 (pts)	2023-24 (pts)
	97.5	103.6	110.1	113.9
	98.6	104.4	111.0	114.3
	98.7	104.1	111.0	114.2
	98.9	102.9	111.1	114.3
	99.1	103.1	111.5	114.5
	99.2	102.9	111.6	114.6
	99.1	102.8	111.9	114.9
mid-Aug	99.2	102.1	112.1	115.1
	99.3	101.6	112.3	115.2
	99.6	101.7	112.3	114.9
	100.0	102.3	112.5	115.1
	100.2	102.7	112.5	115.3
	100.0	102.5	112.2	115.1
	99.3	102.2	111.7	114.6
	99.5	102.6	111.9	114.5
	100.4	104.3	112.6	115.5
	100.7	105.5	112.9	115.8
	100.9	106.4	113.0	115.3
	101.3	106.9	113.2	115.3
	102.1	107.4	113.7	115.6
mid-Nov	102.4	107.9	114.0	115.8
	102.8	108.2	114.2	116.8
	103.3	108.7	114.5	117.3
	103.4	108.5	114.3	117.6
	102.6	107.7	113.7	117.0
	98.8	104.0	110.4	114.2
	96.1	99.9	105.6	109.5
	97.4	100.5	106.0	109.0
	99.5	102.8	108.4	111.0
	100.5	104.2	109.8	112.4
	101.1	105.0	110.5	113.2
	101.6	105.5	111.4	113.9
	102.3	106.1	112.0	114.4
mid-Feb	102.6	105.9	112.5	114.7
	103.1	105.8	113.0
	103.3	106.1	113.4
	103.7	107.1	113.6
	103.8	107.5	113.7
	103.7	107.6	113.9
	102.8	107.3	113.7
	102.5	107.5	113.1
	102.7	106.9	112.8
	103.0	106.5	113.2
	103.3	107.1	113.5
	103.7	107.6	113.9
	104.0	107.9	114.3
mid-May	104.2	108.2	114.3
	103.9	108.4	114.3
	103.5	108.3	114.3
	103.7	108.7	114.3
	103.8	109.2	114.5
	103.5	109.7	114.4

Payroll jobs, year on year comparison

["","2020-21","2021-22","2022-23","2023-24"]

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Indexed to the week ending 14 March 2020.

Mid-Aug represents the week ending 15 August 2020, 14 August 2021, 20 August 2022 and 19 August 2023.

Mid-Nov represents the week ending 14 November 2020, 20 November 2021, 19 November 2022 and 18 November 2023.

Mid-Feb represents the week ending 20 February 2021, 19 February 2022, 18 February 2023 and 17 February 2024.

Mid-May represents the week ending 15 May 2021, 14 May 2022, and 20 May 2023.

Education and training drives payroll jobs in all states and territories

From mid-January to mid-February payroll jobs rose in all states and territories with the strongest rises in Northern Territory (3.1 per cent), Victoria (2.5 per cent) and South Australia (2.3 per cent).

“The Education and training industry accounted for around 44 per cent of the total rise in payroll jobs as students returned to studies across the country, and workers in the industry started or returned to their jobs,” Mr Jarvis said.

Share of payroll jobs growth in the month to mid-February 2022 to 2024, selected industries
	Education and training (%)	Health care and social assistance (%)	Administrative and support services (%)	Other Industries (%)
2024	43.8	17.3	8.7	30.2
2023	39.5	13.0	2.7	44.8
2022	47.5	9.1	8.2	35.2

Share of payroll jobs growth in the month to mid-February 2022 to 2024, selected industries

["","Education and training","Health care and social assistance","Administrative and support services","Other Industries"]

[["2024","2023","2022"],[[43.799999999999997],[39.5],[47.5]],[[17.300000000000001],[13],[9.0999999999999996]],[[8.6999999999999993],[2.7000000000000002],[8.1999999999999993]],[[30.199999999999999],[44.799999999999997],[35.200000000000003]]]

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Mid-February represents the week ending 19 February 2022, 18 February 2023 and 17 February 2024.

The three industries represented individually accounted for the largest share of payroll jobs in the latest month to 17 February 2024.

Media notes

An employer characteristics update is included in this release, applied from week ending 30 December 2023, resulting in the share of payroll jobs with “unknown” industry falling from 3.5% previously to 0.2% in this release.
Payroll jobs are not seasonally adjusted, which generally requires at least three years of reasonably stable data. The longstanding seasonally adjusted Labour Force statistics series can aid in the interpretation of labour statistics across periods of greater seasonality, including through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Payroll jobs are predominantly employee jobs paid through payrolls. Some industries, such as Agriculture, forestry and fishing and Construction have high proportions of owner managers who are not included in payroll reporting. See the Scope and coverage section in the Methodology of this release for more information.
In each release, payroll job estimates are revised as more complete data are received. The magnitude of revisions can vary at some points of the year, such as the start and end of the financial and calendar year in line with changes in the reporting activity of businesses.
The ABS acknowledges the continued support of the ATO in enabling the ABS to produce weekly insights into the Australian labour market from Single Touch Payroll data.
When reporting ABS data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) must be attributed as the source.
For media requests and interviews, contact the ABS Media Team via media@abs.gov.au (8:30am to 5pm Monday to Friday AEST).
Access official, high-resolution images of ABS media spokespeople, including Bjorn Jarvis, from our image library.
Subscribe to our media release notification service to get notified of ABS media releases or publications upon their release.

APA

Citation

Standard seasonal rise in payroll jobs in February

APA

Citation

Education and training drives payroll jobs in all states and territories

Media notes

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