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1 million Australians are now out of work: ABS
Australian unemployment has cracked the seven figures, but green shoots are starting to emerge, official figures have shown.

1 million Australians are now out of work: ABS
Australian unemployment has cracked the seven figures, but green shoots are starting to emerge, official figures have shown.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data released on Thursday, 13 August, showed that 1.01 million people, or 7.5 per cent, are now unemployed, reaching its highest levels since 1998.
However, the results were collated during the first two weeks of July prior to Melbourne entering stage 4 lockdowns, with Melbourne’s unemployment tipped to spike.
“The number of unemployed people rose by nearly 16,000 between June and July. For the first time, there were more than 1 million people out of work, available to work and actively looking for work,” said ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis.
The underutilisation rate, which combines the unemployment and underemployment rates, fell 0.4 percentage points to 18.7 per cent but remained 4.7 percentage points higher than March.
The unemployment figures follow the ABS’s release of wage growth, which was the lowest annual increase on record.
Wages crept up by 0.2 per cent in the June quarter, dragging down the yearly rate to 1.8 per cent.
That marks the lowest growth rate in 27 years the ABS has been tracking the figure.
However, green shoots were emerging from the economy with an increased participation rate of 114,700 people between June and July, as well as a 1.3 per cent bump in the hours worked.
Female hours rose more (2.3 per cent) than males (0.6 per cent). Hours worked by females were around 4.9 per cent below in March, compared with 5.9 per cent by males.
The underemployment rate decreased by 0.5 percentage points to 11.2 per cent but remained 2.4 percentage points above March.
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