Good thing we had the November US consumer inflation data and the last US Federal Reserve meeting of 2023 this week, with its strong hint that there could very well be rate cuts next year — otherwise yesterday’s November labour force data here might have seen a surge of “rate rise looms” chatter from the usual collection of local galahs.
Unemployment did rise to an 18-month high of 3.9%, but the Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed that the size of the Australian workforce surged to a record of 14.257 million (seasonally adjusted) last month, while the participation rate hit a new all-time high of 67.2%, and an extra 61,500 jobs were added. Some forecasters had pencilled in a fall of 7,000, others a rise of around 5,000 to 11,000. The November surge was on top of the 55,000 or more in October, although that was put down to temporary part-time workers being employed for the Voice referendum by the electoral office.
With revisions, around 140,000 to 150,000 new jobs have been added since September, when there was a sign of a slowing when only 7,000 new jobs were created and the jobless rate was at 3.6%
The broader story is that the jobs market is keeping pace with the high level of migration — our high employment-to-population ratio has been maintained for most of 2023. The inevitable decline in participation supposedly because of an ageing workforce just keeps getting postponed — indeed, the reverse keeps happening, which is why unemployment went up in November despite the strong jobs creation.
High participation is normally a good sign for the economy and the workforce, but at the moment it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that it’s being driven by families desperately needing a second income to afford mortgage repayments.
The ABS also thinks the labour market is slowly loosening. Hours worked slowed — down 0.1% or 2 million hours, which does suggest that employers are adding staff while cutting hours.
“The recent slowdown in hours worked over the past six months continued into November, with the total number of hours worked now around where it had been back in May. However, this follows very strong growth during late 2022 and early 2023,” the ABS said in its commentary on the figures.
“The slowing in hours means that overall growth rates in employment and hours worked are now similar over the past 18 months. The narrowing gap between these two growth rates suggests that the labour market is now less tight than it has been.”
That’s explained by the surge in immigration and the Australian population. Separate ABS data on Thursday showed the Australian population topped 26.6 million people in the year to June, a rise of 614,000 with net immigration accounting for 518,100 of that figure. That in turn helps explain the 441,000 rise in the size of the workforce in the year to November.
The surge in migration has kept feeding employers’ appetite for workers, even with pay rises at 4% a year or better. That in turn has helped improve the federal budget and the budget deficit. That might change with the expected slowdown in migration in coming quarters. But at the moment, the employment market is still performing very strongly, regardless of the headline figures.
Great. There’s jobs to employ new migrants. But there won’t be room on the roads for them to drive to those jobs, nor public transport capacity to take them back home again. There won’t be homes for them to live in, or schools to educate their kids, or hospital beds for when they are sick. There might not even be enough water in the dams, or pipes for the sewerage.
But there will be jobs to grow company profits, and new workers for companies to exploit. Good-o all round.
How do you know what the carrying capacity of an entire continent is?
Is it just entire continents that you worry about overcrowding or do you take people counters into pubs, cinemas, trains and planes?
Do you sit there nervously thinking they might let too many onto the plane and it won’t stay in the air???
And what do company profits have to do with anything?
Surely it’s cheaper and easier to do more with less, offshore or automate?
Even if we lived in a socialist republic we’d need nurses, aged care workers, police, fire fighters, an army..,,people.
People need people. Far more than money.
Bit pessimistic, you are suggesting that infrastructure is solid state and permanent, and it’s going to run out or pass its ‘carry capacity’?
Infrastructure is dynamic whether roads and bridges which require workers, taxes, budgets and financing to be paid over time, maintenance, upgrades and skilled people to do it, while hospitals requires hardware and technology, plus skilled people to run them for more oldies vs. fewer working age.
Don’t fall for the RW ‘libertarian’ or ‘nativist authoritarian’ traps aka ‘cost of living crisis’ demanding no investment in infrastructure, blaming ‘immigrants’ or ‘population growth’, then demanding tax cuts, smaller budgets, small government and privatised services.
The dirty little secret avoided by RW MSM in the US has been Biden’s economic positives including the investment in infrastructure to revive regional areas too, but according to many in Australia we should not replicate the same, because it might be successful?
I share your cynicism. I’ve said it before; it’s a reverse Field of Dreams for both Labor and Libs. If you build it, they will come. Nah, don’t waste money on ’em, they’re gonna come anyway.
It’s a safe to assume in a world of more people the Austrian population will grow.
It’s grown at the same rate as the North Korean population since the 1960s but at a slower rate than the Japan which has (don’t freak out) 120m!
That was the philosophy of one Bob Carr and Labor were left with an infrastructure deficit for which we are still paying the price in many ways. I don’t subscribe to your conclusion. A reverse Field of Dreams will be if you build it and they don’t come. This has been the case with soe of our privatised utilities – toll roads, stadia, public transport like light rail and metro. This is why there are all sorts of nasties in infrastructure contracts which don’t allow for competition from either government or other private contractors along anywhere near the proposed route and effectively allows these same infrastructure behemoths to blackmail State governments ad infinitum.
We need to build it. We just need to make sure the government builds “it” or has direct oversight of “it”, that the “it” we are building is worth it and benefits a greater number of people and isn’t just a “beer and skittles” exercise like so many – WIN Stadium in Wollongong, Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane which the QLD taxpayer paid $320 million for, Canberra Stadium which cost them $20 million.
Peter Dutton is going to have to speak from both sides of his mouth on this issue.
For increased migration of specifically skilled people to appease LNP base, but against migration numbers as a general issue to attack the govt.
I’m sure he’s talking up Schrodinger’s migrants as we speak
Becoming a difficult act to juggle when demographic data is stark with ageing and longevity i.e. increasing old age dependency ratios due to working age decline in permanent population (see regions), for which modest permanent and high temporary migration is the solution used most nations (inc. those who promote anti-immigrant tropes).
However, the nativist agitprop requires above median age voters to ignore the future, their health and mortality by opposing ‘immigrants’, yet in the bush when explained (vs News headlines), most oldies understand as they see how dependent health services are on ‘immigrants’.
Having racked up 518K immigration, 200K more than crazy Rudd, Chalmers and O’Neil assert with no shame that migration is being “halved”. Also, won’t all you underlings look over here, at our budget surplus, low unemployment, record participation, and cost-of-living relief.
Falling household income? Falling real wages? Energy bill shocks? Rising house prices forever? Worst rental crisis? Homelessness surging? You just imagined it. Even if you didn’t, Albanese Labor couldn’t give a toss. Tell somebody who cares – if you can find them.
Quite logical for the job market to be relatively healthy with a ‘surge’ in migration, because there are multiple factors and complex dynamics of ‘variables’, ‘constants’ and clear long term ‘trends’.
Made more complex by temporary residents eg. student churn over being caught in the NOM (12/16+ month test), counted into the estimated resident population along with the permanent population; this captures most media attention & headlines but it’s temporal or short term ‘data noise’ which will settle.
Long term trends are clear: below replacement fertility, fewer youth (esp. regions), working age decline since 2009 (kept up by NOM churn, but students have restrictions), 5.5 million boomers are in transition to retirement and now ever increasing old age dependency ratios (old age vs. working age) but requiring more health care and related services; those temporaries in NOM churnover are deemed as ‘net financial (budget) contributors’ then depart, to be replaced by new ‘churn’.
Further long term benefits, if workers and employees are in demand, then with union support can bargain for better wages and conditions, whether local or migrant, win win?
No wonder the US linked think tanks and peak bodies are desperate to stitch up unions, permanently.
What about the risk of a brain drain with people leaving?
I know of a number of highly skilled migrants and Australians who have left both Sydney and Australia due to the farcical cost of housing.
They include software developers, accountants, lawyers (ok not that highly skilled!), nurses, aged care workers, child care workers.
I too have tried to escape but couldn’t convince my wife.
Ireland, that is in the EU with free movement of workers, cannot convince people to move there due to the housing costs and is facing huge problems filling job vacancies. Australia could well experience something similar.
‘What about’ a ‘brain drain’, what’s the ‘risk’ & contrary claim you want to ‘escape’ too? One could think of many reasons to escape Oz, but housing for suffering and poor middle class professionals does not pass the whiff test? 🙂
Housing is ‘farcical’ or just another repetitive RW MSM FIRE ‘crisis’ focused on house prices to rusted on audiences, trying to keep an existential floor on the market, because it’s well beyond ‘value’ and there is little demographic powder following in the permanent population vs. headline temporary border ‘churn’.
We’re about to start a mother lode of change with over two decades worth of 5.5 million boomer ‘bomb’ retiring, departing the house market and population data…… like elsewhere, it’ll ‘balance out’ in the long run….
Migration is natural and has always been that way, including Australians’ immigration and emigration; estimated there maybe about a million citizens or PRs offshore at any one time, especially including dual citizens, working holiday visa makers, corporate etc. sectors working as expats?
For example Tony Abbott has taken up a role as ‘researcher’ at Koch Heritage linked entity in Hungary where ‘immigrants’, Soros, EU & Ukraine have been dogwhistled, but the reality is high working age & youth emigration within EU/EEA by Hungarians vs. little open secret, increasing non EU/EEA immigration.
We’re on the same page.
I’m not against immigration/reality, but housing costs are farcical.
That’s not the RW MSM saying it. That’s some randomer paying more for a house than a Hollywood star.
We have the most expensive housing on the planet. (I’d put us above Hong Kong given the culture of home ownership in Australia and the practically non-existent rental laws).
And, yes, we probably should be worried if lawyers and accountants and software developers can’t afford to buy houses. That points to some serious problems with housing costs.
But I don’t blame immigrants for housing costs. I mostly blame the incumbents.
And boomers aren’t retiring from the housing market. They’re either using the equity in their homes to outbid working people at auctions, or giving the money to their children to outbid working people at auctions.
And with zero inheritance tax we’re about to see randomers becoming multimillionaires overnight.
How many millionaires are sustainable???
I reckon a brain drain is a real issue and would actually make dealing with the aging population harder. I don’t think Australia will hit the immigration numbers it needs. Nobody in their right mind would move here as they won’t be able to afford to live.
The only people who can be convinced are either hopelessly in love or hopelessly optimistic.
We need to get on top of housing costs. That means hammering negative gearing and investment properties, banning auctions and turbo charged sales tactics, taxing inheritance and gifts, restricting lending to 4 x a person’s actual salary, and building affordable and public housing (and not much else).
Ireland has done a lot of that and housing is at least affordable for professionals. The issue is lower income workers and the lack of affordable housing.
Once again I despair at the claims of “high employment” levels in Australia here and in other media. Nearly 4% of the active workforce seeking but unable to get a job is unacceptable. A similar or higher percentage (rarely reported) that can’t get their desired hours of work (the under employed) due to insecure and part time work is similarly unacceptable.
And then there are the able members of the workforce that have given up chasing jobs for any number of reasons, these are not even counted as unemployed! Or reported in the media. This is unacceptable too.
We are nowhere near full employment in this country and pretending that “full employment” means leaving a significant portion of the workforce idle and necessary to maintain the required economic conditions is madness and unfair.