Australia’s unemployment rate has stayed at 3.5% in March. It now had a ‘3’ in front of it for 13 consecutive months.
Since February 2022, unemployment has ranged between 3.4% and 3.9%. In March 2023, it held steady at 3.5% for the second consecutive month, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
In line with the increase in employment, female participation rates surged to a record high of 62.5 percent. Their employment-to-population ratio also reached a historical high of 60.4 percent, according to Lauren Ford, ABS head of labor statistics. Female employment increased by 81,000 over the past two months.
The hours worked have also increased over the past 12 months by 5.5%. This is due to people working extra hours to offset the high demand of labor, according to Ms. Ford.
Sometimes, the unemployment rate falls because people stop looking for work – an individual is no longer classified as unemployed if they give up on finding a job. However, in this case, the opposite has occurred: the share of adults who either have a job or are actively looking for one rose from 66.5% in February 2022 to 66.7% in March 2023.
So a higher percentage of adults are in the labor market, which is good news for employers who are struggling to find staff.
The main reason the Reserve Bank has aggressively increased the cash rate since May 2022 has been to reduce inflation by cooling the economy. Normally, that would trigger higher unemployment. But the unemployment rate in March 2023 has stayed at 3.5% which has only fallen by 0.4 percentage points since the rate hikes started.