Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 14-May-25

In April 2025, Australian ‘real’ unemployment increased by 176,000 to 1,780,000 (up 1%, to 11.2% of the workforce), with more people joining the workforce and overall employment dropping. The expansion in the workforce was the main driver of the increase in unemployment with 156,000 people joining the workforce, lifting the number of Australians in the workforce to 15,946,000 (69.4% of Australians aged 14+). Overall employment fell slightly by 20,000 to 14,166,000; the decrease was driven by a drop in full-time employment (down 291,000 to 9,094,000), although part-time employment grew 271,000 to 5,072,000. In addition to the unemployed, 1.47 million Australians (9.2% of the workforce) were under-employed, i.e. working part-time but looking for more work (up 43,000 from March). In total 3.25 million Australians (20.4% of the workforce) were either unemployed or under-employed in April. Roy Morgan’s unemployment figure of 11.2% is clearly more than double the ABS estimate of 4.1% for March, but is in line with the combined ABS unemployment and under-employment figure of 10.0%.

CORPORATES
ROY MORGAN LIMITED, AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS