Australia’s unemployment rate in April falls to 5.5%
- Claire Lee
- Topics: Australia, Home Page - News, Job Cuts, News, Recruitment
Australia’s unemployment rate fell for its sixth consecutive month in April to 5.5%, which is also the lowest since April 2020, reveal figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
There was however, a decline of 30,600 jobs in April, mostly due to women exiting the labour market for the month, which drove participation down 0.3% to 66%.
Official figures also show an improvement in youth unemployment, which is now better than at the start of the pandemic, down to 10.6%, one point lower than March last year.
Despite the end of its wage subsidy programme, ABS noted that the end of JobKeeper “did not have a discernible impact on employment between March and April”.
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“We have not seen large changes in the indicators that would suggest a clear JobKeeper impact, such as an increase in people working reduced or zero hours for economic reasons or because they were leaving their job,” said Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at ABS.
“We also haven’t seen large net flows out of employment across many population groups,” Jarvis added.
