The unemployment rate edged up 0.1 percentage points to 5.8 percent in June, helped by a slight lift in the participation rate from 64.8 percent to 64.9 percent.
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The total number of people with jobs rose by 7,900 in the month, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday, which was worse than expectations of a rise of 13,500.
“If we don’t get the domestic economy firing, Queensland’s labour market will continue to deteriorate and we will see that unemployment rate creep up and up and up”, Mr Behrens told AAP. The jobless rate, up from 5.7 per cent in May, matched forecasts.
However, the figures were stronger than they looked, with the modest jobs gain driven entirely by full-time positions, which rose by 38,400, while the number of part-time jobs fell 30,600.
HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham said the figures showed labour market was in a holding pattern.
Royal Bank of Canada analyst Michael Turner said persistent slack in the labour force pointed to ongoing weakness in wage growth and muted underlying inflationary pressures, which the Reserve Bank was focused on bring back into its two to three per cent target band.
Australia’s dollar pared a rally that’s put the currency on course to match its longest stretch of weekly gains since 2012, before the nation reports employment data.
He said the jobless rate would then continue to rise until it was above the 6.6 per cent trend rate (6.7 per cent seasonally adjusted) when the Palaszczuk Labor government came into power in February a year ago. The release of the Australian CPI report on the July 27 has the potential to be more of a market mover for the Aussie.
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He said the impact of the rotation was negative for both levels of employment and the number of full-time workers in the statistics.
