Employment and unemployment

Detailed monthly and quarterly Labour Force Survey data, including hours, regions, families, job search, job duration, casual, industry and occupation

In trend terms, in August 2023:

• unemployment rate remained at 3.7%.
• participation rate increased to 67.0%.
• employment increased to 14,096,100.
• employment to population ratio remained at 64.5%.
• underemployment rate increased to 6.5%.
• monthly hours worked increased to 1,954 million.

• There were 4.1 million retirees. 
• Average age at retirement (of all retirees) was 56.3 years. 
• 140,000 people retired in 2020, with an average age of 64.3 years.
• Average age people intend to retire is 65.5 years. 
• Pension was the main source of income for most retirees. 

In 2020-21:

• The most common reason women were unavailable to start a job or work more hours within four weeks was 'Caring for children', while for men it was 'Long-term sickness or disability'.
• The most important incentives for people to seek a job or more hours were the "ability to work part-time hours" and "finding a job that matches skills and experience."

During the year ending February 2023:

• 1.8 million people were not working but wanted to work (potential workers).
• Job mobility remained at 9.5% for a second year in a row, the highest rate in a decade.
• The annual retrenchment rate was 1.4%, the lowest annual rate on record (since 1972).

In February 2023:

• 792,200 part-time workers were underemployed - (preferred and were available to work more hours, representing 19.4% of all part-time workers).
• About half of the underemployed part-time workers preferred to work full-time hours (44.5%).
• Half of the underemployed part-time workers preferred an extra 10 hours or less (median extra hours preferred).
• 37.3% of underemployed part-time workers spent a year or more working in a job with insufficient hours.  

In February 2023, there were 21.2 million people in the usually resident civilian population who were aged 15 years or over, of whom:

• 13.8 million were employed.
• 1.8 million were not working but wanted to work (potential workers).
• 1.0 million were available to start work immediately (in the week before the survey interview)
• 5.6 million did not want to work or were permanently not able to work (not potential workers).

There were 2,160,000 public sector employees at the end of June 2022 comprising:

• 254,000 employees in Commonwealth government;
• 1,713,500 in state government; and
• 192,500 in local government.

Total public sector cash wages and salaries in 2021-22 was $193,960.9 million.

In June 2022:

• There were 7.3 million families, an increase of 1 million since June 2012
• 1 in 7 families were one parent families (14.2%)
• There were 1.4 million jobless families (19.2%)
• Of the 6.2 million couple families, 1.7% were same-sex couples

Employment in renewable energy activities reports on full time equivalent employment by state and territory and type of renewable energy

Detailed labour force data collected on a quarterly basis

Summary results following the process of rebenchmarking the Labour Force Survey data to the final 2016 Census based Estimated Resident Population