Part time and casual employment is skyrocketing. Not good if you want more work. Most professional resume writers don’t know or care about unemployment data. I do.

How important is getting a job? It feeds the family, puts a roof over one’s head, pays the bills and creates a social life.

The latest Roy Morgan employment series data shows there were more than 12.6 million Australians employed in December 2020, up 210,000 since November.

The workforce increased to a record high in December of nearly 14.4 million.

Even so, 1,724,000 Australians were unemployed (12.0% of the workforce), up 44,000 from November.

Roy Morgan’s unemployment figure of 12.0% for December is significantly higher than the current ABS estimate for November 2020 of 6.8%, because Morgan’s methodology is more accurate.

There were more people looking for full-time work, up 18,000 to 797,000 and part-time work, up 26,000 to 927,000.

The workforce in December was 14,373,000 – comprised of 12,649,000 employed Australians and 1,724,000 unemployed Australians looking for work.

In large part, the improvement in employment was driven by increases in NSW (up 103,000) and Queensland (up 168,000).

Under-employment was up slightly in December as part-time employment hits record high. In addition to those who were unemployed, 1.36 million Australians (9.4% of the workforce) were under-employed – working part-time but looking for more work.

This was an increase of 73,000 on a month ago driven by an increase in part time employment that hit a record high of 4.5 million in December.

In total 3.08 million Australians (21.4% of the workforce) were either unemployed or under-employed in December, an increase of 117,000 on November.

Compared to early March, before the nation-wide lockdown was implemented, in December there were over 900,000 more Australians either unemployed or under-employed (+5.8% points).