Australia: The 1% rise in unemployment is hiding a lot of pain – Westpac

The fall in participation was the wild card this month and it did not disappoint with a record fall, economists at Westpac Institutional Bank inform.

Key quotes

“Seasonally adjusted employment fell by 594.3k in April. As expected it was significantly less than the 1,000k drop estimated from the ATO Weekly Payrolls but a bit larger than Westpac’s -450k and the market -550k.”

“Despite the significant fall in employment, the rise in unemployment was just 1ppt to 6.2% from 5.2%.”

“The rise in unemployment was not larger due to a record fall in participation, down 2.4ppt to 63.5% with a 489.8k drop in labour force.” 

“As we expected the hit to hour and underemployment was significant. Total hours worked fell by around 9.2% in April while the underemployment rate lifted 4.9ppt to 13.7%.”