CANBERRA, July 18 (Xinhua) — Australia’s unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1 percent in June from 4.0 percent in May, official labor force figures published Thursday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed.
The total number of employed Australians rose by 50,200 between May and June but was offset by the number of jobless Australians rising by 9,700 in the same period.
The participation rate — which measures the proportion of working-age Australians who are either employed or actively looking for work — rose from 66.8 percent in May to 66.9 percent in June.
“The participation rate in June was only 0.1 percentage point lower than the historical high of 67.0 percent in November 2023,” Bjorn Jarvis, head of labor statistics at the ABS, said in a statement.
Overall there were 608,200 unemployed people in Australia who were actively looking for work in June. Jarvis noted that unemployment has increased from a low of 491,000 people in October 2022 but remained 100,000 people lower than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The unemployment rate was 0.5 percentage points higher than June last year, and 1.1 percentage points lower than March 2020,” he said.
The ABS data revealed that the total number of hours worked by Australians rose by 0.8 percent between May and June despite an increase in sick leave.
Jarvis said that 4.5 percent of employed Australians could not work their usual hours in June because they were ill compared to the pre-pandemic June average of 3.6 percent.
