The opportunities for the unemployed in Australia are deteriorating

I have very little time today given other commitments. In recent months the Australian labour market has deteriorated quite noticeably and the Government has been forced to revise its estimates of the unemployment rate up to 6.25 per cent from 5.75 per cent in 2014. It is currently at 5.7 per cent and rising and before the GFC it reached a low-point value of 4 per cent. Underemployment is also rising as is hidden unemployment as the participation rate falls due to lack of employment opportunities. Further, in the last 6 months around 84 per cent of the net jobs created have been part-time. For the first time in several federal elections, unemployment and the paucity of job openings has become an election issue. Today, I used the little free time I had available to update my gross flows database to see if we could discern these trends as changing transition probabilities. In this blog I analyse the flows between full-time and part-time employment as well as movements between non-participation and employment to finish off the story. This blog is thus just an exploration of the data and an exercise to keep my databases current and for me to know what they are saying. The empirical side of my working life!

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