Australia employment grew 50k in December, or 0.4% to 12.9m, matched expectations. Full time employment rose 35.6k to 8.76m. Part-time employment rose 14.3k to 4.15m. Over the year to December 2020, employment dropped by -0.5% or -63.9k. Unemployment rate dropped to 6.6%, down from 6.8%, better than expectation of 6.7%. Participation rate rose 0.1% to 66.2%.
Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at the ABS, said, “Although employment has recovered 90 per cent of the fall from March to May, the recovery in part-time employment has outpaced full-time employment. While part-time employment was higher than March, full-time employment was 1.3 per cent below March.”
