Employment and unemployment

In trend terms, in October 2023:

• unemployment rate remained at 3.7%. 
• participation rate decreased to 66.8%.
• employment increased to 14,145,400.
• employment to population ratio remained at 64.4%.
• underemployment rate remained at 6.4%.
• monthly hours worked decreased to 1,937 million.

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

In 2022-23:

• 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."

There were 2,430,400 public sector employees in the month of June 2023 comprising:

• 350,300 employees in Commonwealth government (including defence force personnel);
• 1,871,900 in state government; and
• 208,200 in local government.

Total public sector cash wages and salaries in 2022-23 was $214,987.5 million.

In June 2023:

• There were 7.5 million families, an increase of 1.0 million since June 2013
• 1 in 7 families were one parent families (14.7%)
• There were 1.4 million jobless families (18.9%)
• Of the 6.2 million couple families, 2.4% were same-sex couples

• 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 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.  

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, 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).

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