Unemployment jumps above 7pc as another 227,700 jobs go in May - ABC News

Australia's unemployment rate jumped to 7.1 per cent in May from 6.4 per cent in April, with the Bureau of Statistics estimating a further 227,700 jobs were lost last month.

The loss in jobs was much larger than the 100,000 typically forecast by economists, and the unemployment rate would have jumped much higher still without another big fall in people looking for work.

The participation rate surprised by slumping a further 0.7 percentage points to 62.9 per cent, the lowest level since January 2001.

To be counted as unemployed by the ABS you must be actively looking and available for work.

"The drop in employment, of close to a quarter of a million people, added to the 600,000 in April, brings the total fall to 835,000 people since March," said Bjorn Jarvis, the head of labour statistics at the ABS.

"In two months, the percentage of people aged 15 and over employed in Australia decreased from around 62.5 per cent to around 58.7 per cent."

The full weakness in the jobs market is also captured by a record underutilisation rate of 20.2 per cent, which combines the unemployed and underemployed.

"The ABS estimates that a combined group of around 2.3 million people — around one-in-five employed people — were affected by either job loss between April and May or had less hours than usual for economic reasons in May," added Mr Jarvis.

These job losses and working hour reductions were also unevenly distributed across the population.

"Women continued to be more adversely affected by the labour market deterioration than men. Younger workers have also been particularly impacted," Mr Jarvis added.

The youth unemployment rate, for 15-24-year-olds, jumped a further 2 percentage points over the month to be sitting at 16.1 per cent.

However, Capital Economics analyst Marcel Theliant said "it wasn't all doom and gloom".

"The number of employees who worked fewer hours or no hours at all fell from 1.8 million to 1.55 million, with those working zero hours halving to 360,000.

"As a result, hours worked fell by just 0.7 per cent month-on-month, much less than the 9.5 per cent plunge in April."

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2020-06-18 01:59:02Z
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