NOVEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Oct 19	Nov 19	Oct 19 to Nov 19	Nov 18 to Nov 19
Trend
	Employed people ('000)	12,944.7	12,962.0	17.4	2.1%
	Unemployed people ('000)	717.5	716.3	-1.2	6.5%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.3	5.2	0.0 pts	0.2 pts
	Underemployment rate (%)	8.4	8.4	0.0 pts	0.1 pts
	Participation rate (%)	66.1	66.1	0.0 pts	0.5 pts
	Monthly hours worked in all jobs ('000 000)	1,780.5	1,782.8	2.3	1.6%
Seasonally Adjusted
	Employed people ('000)	12,914.6	12,954.4	39.9	2.0%
	Unemployed people ('000)	724.9	708.1	-16.8	3.3%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.3	5.2	-0.1 pts	0.1 pts
	Underemployment rate (%)	8.5	8.3	-0.2 pts	-0.2 pts
	Participation rate (%)	66.0	66.0	0.0 pts	0.3 pts
	Monthly hours worked in all jobs ('000 000)	1,778.3	1,781.2	2.9	1.7%

EMPLOYED PEOPLE


UNEMPLOYMENT RATE


NOVEMBER KEY POINTS

TREND ESTIMATES

• Employment increased by 17,400 to 12,962,000 people. Full-time employment increased by 8,300 to 8,843,600 people and part-time employment increased by 9,000 to 4,118,400 people.
• Unemployment decreased by 1,200 to 716,300 people.
• Unemployment rate decreased by less than 0.1 pts to 5.2%.
• Participation rate remained steady at 66.1%.
• Monthly hours worked in all jobs increased by 2.3 million hours to 1,782.8 million hours.

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES

• Employment increased by 39,900 to 12,954,400 people. Full-time employment increased by 4,200 to 8,837,300 people and part-time employment increased by 35,700 to 4,117,200 people.
• Unemployment decreased by 16,800 to 708,100 people.
• Unemployment rate decreased by 0.1 pts to 5.2%.
• Participation rate remained steady at 66.0%.
• Monthly hours worked in all jobs increased by 2.9 million hours to 1,781.2 million hours.

LABOUR UNDERUTILISATION

• The monthly trend underemployment rate remained steady at 8.4%. The monthly underutilisation rate remained steady at 13.6%.
• The monthly seasonally adjusted underemployment rate decreased by 0.2 pts to 8.3%. The monthly underutilisation rate decreased by 0.3 pts to 13.5%.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

Issue	Release Date
December 2019	23 January 2020
January 2020	20 February 2020
February 2020	19 March 2020
March 2020	16 April 2020
April 2020	14 May 2020
May 2020	18 June 2020

EARLY RELEASE OF DETAILED MONTHLY AND QUARTERLY STATISTICS
Labour Force, Australia, Detailed - Electronic Delivery, Nov 2019 (cat. no. 6291.0.55.001) and Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, Quarterly, Nov 2019 (cat. no. 6291.0.55.003) will both be released on Monday 23 December 2019, given the proximity of today's release to Christmas. The release of these data are usually a week after the release of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0).

BUSHFIRES IN NOVEMBER
Bushfires resulted in minor disruption to data collection activities during November 2019 in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory. In many cases data could still be collected during the latter stages of the enumeration period. Quality assurance undertaken by the ABS confirmed that these disruptions did not result in any notable impacts to Labour Force statistics. Other bushfires around the country had no impact on enumeration activities.

IMPROVEMENTS TO TRENDING METHODS
As part of the 2019 Annual Seasonal Re-analysis (ASR), the outcomes of which were published in April 2019, improvements were identified in the estimation method of its trend series from moving from direct trending to indirect trending. The ABS has completed its review and confirmed that all Labour Force trend series should be indirectly trended, rather than a mixture of indirect and direct approaches.

These changes have been implemented in Labour Force, Australia, Australia, Nov 2019 (cat. no. 6202.0). Further information on this change can be found in the article Improvement to the Trending Method for Labour Force Rates and Ratios, which was released in the October 2019 issue.

QUARTERLY POPULATION REBENCHMARKING
The ABS has revised the original Labour Force series for the previous 19 months to reflect the latest available preliminary and final estimates of Estimated Resident Population. This quarterly process ensures that the Labour Force series promptly reflects any change in population trends and minimises the size of revisions that can occur when the series are rebenchmarked following each Census of Population and Housing. It is expected that, on most occasions, the quarterly revisions will not be significant.

For further information about rebenchmarking, refer to the Rebenchmarking Labour Force Estimates article published in the February 2015 issue of Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0).

IMPROVEMENTS TO HOURS WORKED BENCHMARKING
In addition to the annual hours worked benchmarking that was carried out in July 2019, further improvements were implemented in this release that have resulted in minor changes throughout the time series. These small improvements were implemented to coincide with the quarterly population rebenchmarking revisions.

ROUNDING
Estimates of changes in the commentary have been calculated using un-rounded estimates, and may be different from, but are more accurate than, movements obtained from the rounded estimates. Graphs also depict un-rounded estimates.

SAMPLING ERROR
The estimates in this publication are based on a sample survey. Published estimates and movements are subject to sampling variability. Standard errors give a measure of sampling variability. The interval bounded by two standard errors is the 95% confidence interval, which provides a way of looking at the variability inherent in estimates. There is a 95% chance that the true value of the estimate lies within that interval.

	Monthly change		95% Confidence interval
Total Employment	39 900		-21 500	to	101 300
Total Unemployment	-16 800		-53 200	to	19 600
Unemployment rate	-0.1 pts		-0.3 pts	to	0.1 pts
Participation rate	0.0 pts		-0.4 pts	to	0.4 pts

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, email client.services@abs.gov.au or contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.