Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 15-Feb-23

The latest Roy Morgan employment series data shows that 1.61 million Australians (10.7% of the workforce) were unemployed in January, up 223,000 from December. The number of Australians looking for full-time work rose by 49,000 to 644,000 in January, while the number of people looking for part-time work rose by 174,000 to 963,000. Some 1.43 million Australians (9.5% of the workforce) were under-employed – working part-time but looking for more work – up 65,000 from December. In total, 3.03 million Australians (20.2% of the workforce) were either unemployed or under-employed in January, up 288,000 on December. This is the highest level of combined unemployment and under-employment since February 2021. Meanwhile, employment decreased by 150,000 to 13,418,000 in January. This was driven by a drop in part-time employment (down 280,000 to 4,517,000), while full-time employment increased by 130,000 to 8,901,000. The movements in both full-time and part-time employment were in line with the normal seasonal trends seen at this time of year following the Christmas retailing season. Roy Morgan’s under-employment figure of 9.5% is over 3% points higher than the ABS estimate of 6.1% for December.

CORPORATES
ROY MORGAN LIMITED, AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS