The ABS released the January 2018 employment data which shows that the trend unemployment remained steady at 5.5 per cent, where it has hovered for the past seven months.
The ABS says that full-time employment grew by a further 9,000 persons in January, while part-time employment increased by 14,000 persons, underpinning a total increase in employment of 23,000 persons.
Full-time employment has now increased by around 292,000 since January 2017 and makes up the majority of the 395,000 net increase in employment over the period. In line with the increasing female participation in the labour force, female full-time employment accounted for 55 per cent of the full-time employment growth over the past year.
Over the past year, trend employment increased by 3.3 per cent, which is above the average year-on-year growth over the past 20 years (1.9 per cent). Prior to the past two months, the last time it was 3.3 per cent or higher was back in February 2008, before the Global Financial Crisis.
The trend monthly hours worked decreased slightly, by 1.2 million hours (0.1 per cent), with the annual figure continuing to show strong growth (2.7 per cent).The trend unemployment rate has fallen by 0.3 percentage points over the year but has been at approximately the same level for the past seven months, after the December 2017 figure was revised upward to 5.5 per cent.
Over the past year, the states and territories with the strongest annual growth in trend employment were the ACT (4.8 per cent) Queensland (4.7 per cent) and New South Wales (3.6 per cent).
All states and territories recorded a decrease in their trend unemployment rates, except the Northern Territory and the ACT (which increased 1.1 and 0.3 percentage points respectively).
