Population accelerates
Australia's population is bigger and growing much more quickly than previously thought.
The estimated population increase of one person every 47 seconds means that there are around +50,000 more persons in Australia more than we thought only yesterday, and suggests a projected annual population growth of a level we've never previously seen (see below Tweet!).
Source: ABS
I'll do a separate post on population growth, but in this context it wasn't all that surprising to see the total employment fire higher again in today's job numbers.
As noted this morning, the previous month's decline in employment was likely an anomaly due to the awkward timing of Easter, so we were always likely to see a big rebound in May.
As it turned out, the rebound was stronger even than expected, with employment rising +75,900 to hit 14 million for the first time.
SEEK reported that its job advertisements are now tracking -22 per cent lower than at their cycle highs, but even the labour market specialist economists were a little surprised by these figures.
Looking through the monthly noise and the respective ups and downs, the 3-month average gain in employment was around +47,600, which seems much more realistic.
This was enough to push the unemployment rate back down to 3.6 per cent (or 3.55 per cent to two decimal places).
The unemployment rate has been lower since July 2022, but historically speaking it's still very low.
In particular, New South Wales has an extremely low unemployment rate of just 3.1 per cent.
The wrap
Overall, it was a much stronger than expected jobs release, which pushed bond yields higher and significantly increases the expectation for another interest rate hike in July (this morning a rate hike was priced as only a 25 per cent probability...now it's a much closer call).
Notably, Australia's population is growing far more quickly than the capacity to build housing.
On a gross basis we're only seeing around 40,000 new dwellings commenced and completed each quarter, and far fewer on a net basis after accounting for demolitions.
But the estimated population growth suggests an annual population growth far in excess of 500,000.
---
James Foster did the detailed workings here.
