A steep fall in hours worked last month paints a more accurate accurate picture than the unemployment numbers of the economic pain caused by the COVID lockdowns.
The official ABS figures show unemployment dipped from 4.6 per cent in July to 4.5 per cent in August, even though 146,300 jobs were lost.
People in employment services get extremely worried when people opt out of the workforce.
They are not counted as unemployed and it shows a deep lack of confidence in the labour market..
Hours worked dived 3.7 per cent, with under-employment rising a full percentage point to 9.3 per cent. In real terms, under-employment is around 14 per cent.
NSW had the bulk of the job losses (-173,000), with employment down by 210,000 and hours worked down 13 per cent since the lockdown started.
People have given up looking for work during the lockdowns in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT, with the participation rate diving from 66 to 65.2 per cent.
That’s about 211,188 fewer people in the labour force than in the June survey, taken before the latest lockdowns began.
Jobs website Indeed’s Asia-Pacific economist Callam Pickering said the participation rate was a more relevant measure of the economic damage during the pandemic.
“the conventional definition of unemployed has little meaning in a world where so many jobs cannot be performed,” he said.