Australia employment dropped -594.3k to 12.4m in April, largest fall on record. That was slightly worse than expectation of -575.0k. Full-time jobs dropped -220.5k to 8.66m, Part times jobs dropped 373.8k to 3.76.
Unemployment rate rose 1.0% to 6.2%, highest since September 2015. That was much better than expectation of 8.3%, But it should be noted that firstly, participation rates dropped sharply by -2.4% to 63.5%. Secondly, monthly hours worked in all jobs dropped -163.9m hours to 1625.8m hours.
“The large drop in employment did not translate into a similar sized rise in the number of unemployed people because around 489,800 people left the labour force”, stated Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at the ABS. “This means there was a high number of people without a job who didn’t or couldn’t actively look for work or weren’t available for work”.
