Unemployment rate rises to 4.6% in August

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 4.6 per cent in August, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Sean Crick, ABS head of labour statistics, said: “This month there was 39,000 more people in employment, and 28,000 more people in unemployment.”

Part-time employment rose by 46,000 people in August, while full-time employment fell by 6,000 people.

“This August we recorded a higher proportion of people who were previously not in the labour force moving to being unemployed, compared to recent years,” Mr Crick said.

“The growth in the size of the labour force resulted in the participation rate increasing by 0.2 percentage points to 67.1 per cent.”

The underemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage points to 6.2 per cent.

“Hours worked rose by 14 million hours in August after falling by the same amount in July. This is partly due to having more employed people working zero hours last month compared to usual July months,” Mr Crick said.

Employment and hours worked are closely aligned in annual growth, up 1.6 per cent and 1.7 per cent respectively.

Trend employment grew by 0.2 per cent while hours worked remained steady in August.

Both the trend underemployment and underutilisation rate remained steady in August, at 6.3 per cent and 10.8 per cent respectively.

The ABS has implemented a new Supplementary Survey collection model that removes the historical Supplementary Survey effect previously observed in February and August Labour Force data. It is possible that the Supplementary Survey effect adjustment was inadvertently also capturing some seasonality. If this was the case, removing the adjustments for the Supplementary Survey effect could have an unintended impact on August 2026 estimates. Sensitivity testing indicates any impact on monthly movements is expected to be smaller than normal sampling variability and that the August data is fit-for-purpose. The ABS recommends being aware when using the August 2026 seasonally adjusted Labour Force data of this potential effect, and continues to recommend trend data as providing the best measure of the underlying behaviour of the labour market.

More information is available in the article Supplementary Survey methodology changes in the Labour Force Survey.

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