Jobs in Australia April 2020
14 May 2020 by News DeskJobs in Australia – Seasonally adjusted employment fell by 594,300 people between March and April, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Large changes were seen across all labour market indicators in April.
“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.
Unemployment increased by 104,500 people to 823,300, and the unemployment rate increased by 1.0 percentage point from 5.2 per cent to 6.2 per cent.
The larger than usual number of employed and unemployed people leaving the labour force resulted in an unprecedented fall in the participation rate by 2.4 percentage points to 63.5 per cent.
“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”, Mr Jarvis said.
Jobs in Australia
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hours worked was also extensive. Total hours worked fell by around 9.2 per cent between March and April.
When taken together with people leaving the workforce, around 2.7 million people (about 1 in 5 people employed in March) either left employment or had their hours reduced between March and April. This was much greater than in previous years.
As a result, the number of underemployed people also rose sharply (up 603,300 people, to a total of 1.8 million people), and the underemployment rate rose to a record high 13.7 per cent (up 4.9 percentage points).
The under-utilisation rate, which combines the unemployment and underemployment rates, also rose to a record high of 19.9 per cent.
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