Today (June 17, 2021), the Australian Bureau of Statistics put out the latest – Labour Force, Australia – for May 2021. The data shows that employment increased by 115,200 (which is strong), monthly hours worked increased by 1.4 per cent, unemployment fell by 53,000 (which is excellent), the unemployment rate fell 0.4 points to 5.1 per cent, the participation rate rose 0.3 points (good) and underemployment fell by 0.4 points to 7.4 per cent (excellent). It is hard not to see all these results in a positive light. More jobs are being created, more people are coming back into the labour force and fewer people are being underutilised relative to their desired work intentions. This reverses to some extent the backward step the labour market took last month. The labour market is still 237.1 thousand jobs of where it would have been if employment had continued to grow according to the average growth rate between 2015 and February 2020.