Employment bounce

Today the ABS released its March 2012 print of the monthly labour force series. It showed a big bounce in the number employed. So much for my back of the envelope prediction yesterday.

It is possible we are seeing the end to the current stall in total employment.  This would be a good thing for the economy, but probably a bad thing for those crying for interest rate cuts.

Of note, through the year growth in hours worked was greater than the TTY growth in number employed (but it is arguable that this might be an artifact of the variance in the seasonally adjusted series). That said, the total number of hours worked has risen over the past two months.

Employment grew in all states, except Tasmania.

The unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 5.2%, largely because the participation rate increased 0.2% to 65.4%.

In terms of the unemployment rate for each state, what is happening in Tasmania?

And I will look into gender issues in more detail in a future post ...