More than 14¼ million Aussies employed for the first time

You're hired!

The ABS had pointed out that there was an unusually high number of Aussies waiting to start work in January, in part accounting for the previous weakness in employment numbers.

It turned out they were spot on, with a huge rebound sending employment +116,500 higher in February 2024, to above 14¼ million for the first time. 

Over the past year there's been a good deal of part-time hiring in generally softening labour market conditions, and total hours worked are well down from their highs. 

Source: ABS

Looking through the challenges with seasonality and associated noise, the 3-month average change in employment was +23,000, which is a fair bit lower than the +35,000 or so which will be needed to hold down unemployment from here.

That said, the sharp rebound in employment, when combined with changes to the participation rate, saw the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate plummet from 4.1 per cent to 3.7 per cent in January. 

Clearly there have been a few issues here around seasonal trends resulting in enormous volatility, but the trend unemployment rate has been flat for the past 6 months at 3.8 per cent.

Looking ahead, leading indicators such as job advertisements suggest that the unemployment will rate rise, but these were considerably better than expected numbers which should provide a solid foundation for the hoped-for soft landing scenario.

Financial markets largely looked through the volatility and didn't get overall excited, with the Aussie dollar temporarily jumping back up to 66.3 US cents before returning all the way backdown to 65.7 cents, and the 3-year bond yield still trading at around 3.7 per cent. 

James Foster ran through the post-pandemic changes in hiring patters and looked at the full labour force survey figures in detail here.

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