In economic news, the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.4% and the participation rate has remained stable despite floods affecting the working hours of people in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.
New figures from the Office for Statistics show the jobless rate fell 0.1 percentage point in October, driven by a fall in male unemployment (which fell to 3.2 per cent in in October, its lowest rate since November 1974).
In seasonally adjusted terms, more than 32,000 people gained employment in October, while 20,600 remained unemployed. There are more than 13.6 million people working across the country.
ABS head of labor statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the participation rate of 66.5% remains 0.7 percentage points higher than before the pandemic. The underutilization rate, a combination of the unemployment and underemployment rate, fell to 9.3%, the lowest rate in 40 years.
“The low underutilization rate of 9.3 percent in October 2022 reflects the fact that there are now around 236,000 fewer people unemployed and 365,000 fewer people employed than in March 2020,” Jarvis said.
“Unemployment and underemployment are now about two-thirds of what they were.”
The unemployment rate has plummeted from its July 2020 peak of 7.5% and remains at near 50-year lows. It fell to 3.4 percent in July, but has been below 4 percent since March.
The unemployment rate in NSW fell slightly to 3.2 per cent, and in Queensland, it fell 0.1 percentage point to 3.4 per cent. Unemployment rates in Victoria and Western Australia were steady at 3.5%.