Australian unemployment rate remains steady as labour market shows signs of a slowdown
The number of those in full-time employment decreased while part-time work increased in December
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The unemployment rate remained at 3.9 percent in December, indicating a continuing tight labour market that was now starting to slow, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). In seasonally adjusted terms, employment decreased by 65,000 people overall to 14,201,100. Full-time employment fell by 106,600 to 9,791,200 people. Part-time employment increased by 41,400 to 4,409,900 people.
“The strength in employment in October and November and the fall in December reflected changes in the timing of employment growth in the last few months of 2023, compared with earlier years,” said David Taylor, ABS head of labour statistics.
Gareth Aird, CBA head of Australian economics, said this reflected the adoption of Black Friday sales events in the Australian retail sector, which had shifted long-term hiring and spending patterns.
“The growing popularity of Black Friday sales has now meant a lot more hiring is done in the month of November rather than December,” Mr Aird said. “This is a recent phenomenon.”
The employment-to-population ratio and participation rate both hit record highs in November. Both measures slipped by 0.4 percent in December. The employment-to-population ratio fell to 64.2 percent and the participation rate fell to 66.8 percent.Underemployment – which measures the portion of workers who would like to work more hours if they could – remained at 6.5 percent.
Mr Taylor said: “In trend terms, many of the key indicators still point to a tight labour market. However, the increasing unemployment rate since November 2022, along with the rising underemployment rate and slowdown in the growth of employment and hours worked, suggest that the labour market is starting to slow.”
In November 2022, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.5 percent. Mr Aird said the increase since then to 3.9 percent today indicated the labour market was loosening.“Other indicators of the labour market also capture its loosening,” he said. “Jobs growth over the past six months has all been in the part-time space. Seek jobs ads in December … were down by 17.4 percent over the year. And the number of applicants per job ad continued to march higher in November. Applicants per job ad were up by 81.1 percent over the year to November.”
Movements in the unemployment rate are a key factor considered by the Reserve Bank board when making interest rate decisions. The next decision will be announced on 6 February. Mr Aird said CBA expected the unemployment rate to gradually lift over 2024 to end the year at 4.5 percent. “We believe RBA rate cuts will be required this year to prevent the unemployment rate from rising much above 4.5 percent. Our base case sees the RBA commence an easing cycle in September.”
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Over the next five years, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation will be committing US$480 million to an initiative dedicated to ocean conservation.
The foundation made the announcement on April 17 during the closing ceremony of the ninth Our Ocean Conference, held in Athens, Greece.
“Ocean science and conservation are core to the Packard Foundation’s DNA,” wrote Meg Caldwell, interim vice president of environment and science, in an email. “The next phase of the Packard Foundation’s commitment to ocean health, the 10-year (2023-33) Ocean Initiative, aims to protect and restore ocean ecosystems for people and nature, now and in the future.”
The support from the funding will be focused in four countries, Chile, China, the U.S., and Indonesia, which were selected because of their “biological significance, human dependence on ocean ecosystems, and opportunities to affect positive changes,” Caldwell says.
The foundation’s ocean initiative will specifically address three primary threats: climate change, unsustainable overfishing, and habitat loss. These issues not only harm ocean ecosystems, but also the countless people who rely on the ocean for “their livelihoods, nutrition, and cultural heritage, disproportionately impacting Indigenous peoples and coastal communities,” Caldwell says.
Caldwell emphasises the need to include these groups of people in the conversations and actions regarding ocean conservation.
“Weak governance and seafood supply chains that put profit ahead of people compound these threats, allowing human rights abuses and inequities to persist,” she says.
The foundation plans to address these threats by funding work within three systems: civil society, to strengthen “the engagement of ocean-reliant communities” to create more inclusive solutions; seafood supply chains, to end illegal fishing, overfishing, and human rights abuses; and governance, to enact reform that will protect both the ocean and the reliant communities.
The Packard Foundation is also a part of the Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance, which is a philanthropic initiative working to address the climate crisis and its damage to the ocean. ORCA’s mission is “to provide a surge of more than US$250 million dollars in grants over four years to catalyze work across a handful of immediate ocean-climate priorities,” according to their website.
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