#2 – “There are no jobs out there”
Unemployment is 5.6%. That’s 171,000 people looking for work.
So I’m not going to sit here and tell you the job market is great for job-seekers.
However, while unemployment is up, so is employment.
The number of people in jobs is up 1.2% over the last year.
So how does that happen? How can employment and unemployment both go up?
Because there was a 1.2% increase in the number of people in work. But there was a 1.6% increase in the size of the workforce.
For instance, stay-at-home parents aren’t counted as unemployed. They’re not looking for a job.
But if they, or retirees, or students start looking for jobs, they’re now in the workforce. So they’re now counted as unemployed.
So a higher unemployment rate isn’t always the same thing as ‘fewer people in work’.
The Reserve Bank expects that balance to improve slowly. It forecasts unemployment to fall to 5.1% at the end of 2027.
