Thursday, 18 March 2021

V is for Victoire!

Employment booms

Although it wasn't in any market forecasts, I did flag the possibility of record high employment rebounding to 13 million this month...

And it was to be so, with the figures sticking up a beautiful V-sign (for victory) to the pessimists, although many still believe employment will decline when JobKeeper ends.

Total employment is now above 13 million. 


The unemployment rate plunged all the way down to 2016 levels from 6.4 per cent to 5.8 per cent, with even lower results for New South Wales and Victoria. 


Employment has already largely recovered in the two most populous states in just 9 months, but Queensland has been the big outperformer over the year. 


Hours worked actually sneaked a little higher over the past year, though presumably many of these hours were done from home rather than in a city office. 

What more to say? 

A huge beat with full time employment increasing by a monster 89,100 in February. Wow!

Now let's hope we have the collective ambition to carry this thing through and push for an unemployment rate of 3 to 4 per cent.