Labour Force, Australia

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Headline estimates of employment, unemployment, underemployment, participation and hours worked from the monthly Labour Force Survey

Reference period
August 2022
Released
15/09/2022

Key statistics

In seasonally adjusted terms, in August 2022:

  • unemployment rate increased to 3.5%.
  • participation rate increased to 66.6%.
  • employment increased to 13,592,100.
  • employment to population ratio increased to 64.3%.
  • underemployment rate decreased to 5.9%.
  • monthly hours worked increased 0.8% to 1,854 million.
Jul-2022Aug-2022Monthly changeMonthly change (%)Yearly changeYearly change (%)
Seasonally adjusted
Employed people13,558,60013,592,10033,5000.2%570,3004.4%
Unemployed people473,600487,70014,0003.0%-132,500-21.4%
Unemployment rate3.4%3.5%0.1 ptsna-1.1 ptsna
Underemployment rate6.0%5.9%-0.1 ptsna-3.4 ptsna
Participation rate66.4%66.6%0.2 ptsna1.4 ptsna
Monthly hours worked in all jobs 1,840 million 1,854 million14 million0.8%136 million7.9%

Estimates of changes throughout this release are calculated using un-rounded level estimates and may be different from, but are more accurate than, movements obtained from the rounded level estimates.

Survey impacts and changes

Reinstating Trend data

The ABS is planning to reinstate Labour Force Trend estimates (including for the entire COVID period) and revert to concurrent seasonal adjustment. The monthly Trend estimates will be available with September 2022 data to be published in Labour Force, Australia, released on 20 October 2022. The Labour Force, Australia, Detailed estimates will become available in two stages, on 27 October for monthly series and 22 December 2022 for quarterly series. For further information, see Seasonal adjustment and trend estimates below.

Labour Force, Australia, Detailed to be released on 21 September 2022

Due to the announced National public holiday on 22 September 2022, the Labour Force, Australia, Detailed publication that was scheduled for release on Thursday 22 September will be brought forward to Wednesday 21 September 2022.

Articles and other information

The ABS has again included more detailed information given the interest in understanding:

  • hours worked 
  • the labour market before the monthly Labour Force Survey commenced in 1978

This detailed information can be found in:

For a list of previously published LFS articles, see the Article archive.

The ABS is also continuing to include data cubes EM2a and EM2b in this release. These two data cubes are usually only released in Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, but will continue to be released in the headline release over the coming months, to enable more detailed analysis of changes in hours worked and the reasons that people are working reduced or no hours.

Additional spreadsheets and pivot tables are published in Labour Force, Australia, Detailed one week after this release, while longitudinal labour force microdata are released in the ABS DataLab, on 23 September 2022 (see Microdata: Longitudinal Labour Force, Australia).

Seasonal adjustment and trend estimates

Quarterly rebenchmarking of labour force statistics

Survey response and timeline

Unemployment

In seasonally adjusted terms, in August 2022:

  • unemployment rate increased to 3.5%.
  • unemployment rate was 1.8 pts below March 2020.
  • unemployed people increased by 14,000 to 487,700. 
  • unemployed people was 231,700 lower than March 2020.
  • youth unemployment rate increased to 8.4%.
  • youth unemployment rate was 3.2 pts lower than March 2020.

Employment

In seasonally adjusted terms, in August 2022, employment:

  • increased by 33,500 people (0.2%) to 13,592,100 people.
  • was 589,800 people (4.5%) higher than March 2020.

 

Flows into and out of employment

Full-time and part-time employment

In seasonally adjusted terms, in August 2022:

  • full-time employment increased by 58,800 to 9,468,500 people, and part-time employment decreased by 25,300 to 4,123,600 people.
  • part-time share of employment was 30.3%, 1.5 pts lower than in March 2020.

 

Employment-to-population ratio

In seasonally adjusted terms, in August 2022, the employment-to-population ratio:

  • increased to 64.3%.
  • was higher than March 2020 by 1.9 pts.

The employment-to-population ratio provides a measure of employment relative to the size of the population.

Hours worked

In seasonally adjusted terms, in August 2022, monthly hours worked in all jobs:

  • increased by 14.5 million hours (0.8%) to 1,854 million hours.
  • increased by 85.0 million hours (4.8%) from March 2020.

See the article Insights into hours worked for more.

Participation

In seasonally adjusted terms, in August 2022, the participation rate:

  • increased by 0.2 pts to 66.6%, 0.7 pts higher than March 2020.

  • increased by 0.2 pts to 71.0% for men and also increased by 0.2 pts to 62.3% for women.

Underemployment

In seasonally adjusted terms, in August 2022:

  • underemployment rate decreased by 0.1 pts to 5.9%.
  • underemployment rate was 2.9 pts lower than March 2020. 
  • underutilisation rate remained at 9.4%.
  • underutilisation rate was 4.7 pts lower than March 2020.

States and Territories

August 2022, Seasonally adjusted
New South WalesVictoriaQueenslandSouth AustraliaWestern AustraliaTasmaniaNorthern TerritoryAustralian Capital TerritoryAustralia
Employed people4,278,8003,525,2002,775,400893,5001,471,500264,100135,300236,80013,592,100
Employed people - monthly change0.1%0.0%0.0%1.2%0.1%-0.1%1.0%1.5%0.2%
Employment to population ratio63.7%64.5%64.4%60.7%67.1%58.3%70.3%68.9%64.3%
Employment to population ratio - monthly change0.0 pts0.0 pts-0.1 pts0.7 pts-0.1 pts-0.1 pts0.3 pts1.0 pts0.1 pts
Unemployment rate3.4%3.7%3.2%3.9%3.1%4.9%4.5%2.7%3.5%
Unemployment rate - monthly change0.2 pts0.6 pts-0.5 pts-0.1 pts-0.1 pts1.2 pts1.0 pts-0.6 pts0.1 pts
Underemployment rate5.6%5.8%6.4%6.5%5.9%7.3%5.4%4.4%5.9%
Underemployment rate - monthly change-0.3 pts-0.1 pts-0.1 pts-0.3 pts0.5 pts1.0 pts0.2 pts0.6 pts-0.1 pts
Participation rate66.0%67.0%66.5%63.1%69.3%61.3%73.6%70.9%66.6%
Participation rate - monthly change0.2 pts0.4 pts-0.5 pts0.6 pts-0.1 pts0.7 pts1.0 pts0.6 pts0.2 pts

Rotation group analysis

Sample composition and rotation

Estimates for the incoming and outgoing rotation groups

States and territories

Managing COVID-19 impacts on incoming rotation groups

Comparability with seasonally adjusted data

Contribution from sample components to estimates

Data downloads

Labour Force Survey results are released in three stages.

  1. Spreadsheets of the headline indicators are published in this release
  2. Additional, more detailed spreadsheets and pivot tables are published in Labour Force, Australia, Detailed one week after this first release
  3. Longitudinal labour force microdata are released in the ABS DataLab on a monthly basis, one day after the detailed release (see Microdata: Longitudinal Labour Force, Australia)

See the Survey output section of Labour Force, Australia methodology for more information.

Labour Force status

Data files

Hours worked

Data files

Underemployment and underutilisation

Data files

Flows into and out of employment

GM1 - Labour force status and Gross changes (flows) by Age, Sex, State and Territory, February 1991 onwards

All time series spreadsheets

All time series spreadsheets


 

Data Explorer datasets

Caution: Data in the Data Explorer is currently released after the 11:30am release on the ABS website. Please check the time period when using Data Explorer.

For information on Data Explorer and how it works, see the Data Explorer user guide.

Labour force status by Sex, State and Territory - Number of people employed, unemployed and not in the labour force, monthly, February 1978 and onwards

Article archive

Unemployment and underemployment

Hours worked

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 6202.0.

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