The ‘messy’ trend behind Australia’s rising unemployment is worrying economists
As Jim Chalmers moves among the global elite during the G20 talkfest with fellow finance ministers and big-time investors in Washington this week, he will be spruiking Australia’s enviable economic performance over recent years.A particular point of pride has been the strength of the labour market.Not only has unemployment stayed low, the increase in the share of working-age Australians with a job has climbed by 3.1 percentage points since immediately before the pandemic.That increase is twice the OECD average, and compares with zero growth in the US and New Zealand.
In Canada and the UK, the employment rates have dropped by 0.4 and 1.1 percentage points, respectively.That performance, however, was cast under a cloud this week, after the unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to 4.5% – its highest level in nearly four years.
After dropping to nearly 50-year lows of 3.4% in late 2022, the Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasury had both expected this rising trend to stop at about 4.3%.The AMP chief economist, Shane Oliver, says that the jobless rate is “in a clear rising trend”.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailThe RBA board has made it clear it is holding fire on further rate cuts until it is more confident that inflation continued to ease through the September quarter.
But the latest labour data has complicated the issue.“A further rise beyond this would arguably be violating the RBA’s full employment objective,” Oliver says.“Of course, the rise in unemployment may just reflect the lagged impact of weak economic growth last year, but it may also reflect a messy handover from the public sector to the private sector as the key driver of jobs.”This “messy” handover is what has experts worried.Big increases in federal funding for the care economy – from aged care, to childcare and health more broadly – flowed through to a surge in hiring that accounted for a lion’s share of the more than 1 million jobs created since Labor took office in 2022.
In the 2023 and 2024 calendar years, around 80-90% of the rise in employment was in these so-called “non-market” segments, or heavily taxpayer-subsidised industries.That’s not to denigrate the roles.As Chalmers has been quick to point out, “they are real jobs”.“They look like real jobs to me, looking after older people and people in the NDIS and early childhood education,” he said last month.Sign up to Breaking News AustraliaGet the most important news as it breaksafter newsletter promotionBut this dynamic is key to understanding why employment could continue to boom even as the economy virtually stagnated.
Now we have, as Oliver says, the “messy handover”, as the private sector attempts to pick up the hiring slack.Pat Bustamante, an economist at Westpac, calculates unemployment could push towards 4.8% in early 2026 if the private sector does not grow fast enough to replace the slower growth in government spending.Which way it goes from here remains highly uncertain, and economists now see a real chance the RBA feels the need to deliver an interest rate cut at its Melbourne Cup day meeting.Not everyone is convinced the jobs market is about to head south, or that the central bank will rush to cut rates again.
Jonathan Kearns is chief economist at Challenger and a former senior RBA official,Kearns reckons people and investors have overreacted to one bad employment number,Employment climbed in September, he says, just not quite as much as expected, which, when combined with an influx of new jobseekers, pushed up the jobless measure,That could easily reverse in October, and the RBA board is likely to remain fixed on the “critical” quarterly inflation figure on 29 October,“Things have been too easy,” Kearns says.
“Inflation came down faster than expected and unemployment didn’t rise as much as anticipated,Things looked amazingly good, and you are always going to hit some bumps in the road,” Patrick Commins is Guardian Australia’s economics editor
Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Trump’s inner circle knows how dangerous the incessant misinformation from Fox News can be’
Late-night hosts recapped the many vile leaked messages from a Young Republicans group chat and Donald Trump’s ongoing Fox News-fueled delusions.“It’s hard to imagine, but one day this avalanche of insanity we get buried under, each day deeper and deeper than the next, will one day be taught in history books in every place other than Florida,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday evening. “What a stupid time to be alive.”To wit, Kimmel cited a Daily Beast report that Trump’s inner circle has become “alarmed” by the impact of Fox News on his decision-making. “Trump officials became concerned when Trump asked if he could get a reverse mortgage on the White House and one of those Terry Bradshaw walk-in tubs,” Kimmel joked
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump posting about unflattering Time cover: ‘He just couldn’t help himself’
Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s disdain for his own Time magazine cover and a new mandatory TSA checkpoint video starring Kristi Noem.On Tuesday evening, Jimmy Kimmel relayed concerning news from the World Health Organization (WHO) that antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” are on the rise. Superbugs, Kimmel reminded, are “the world’s most dangerous bacteria that also sounds like a show on Disney+”.“You know, sometimes we get so fixated on Trump we forget that there are other disgusting creatures hellbent on bringing about the end of the world out there,” he joked.On Monday, Trump had “what was easily the most presidential day of his life”, Kimmel continued
Artists plan nationwide US protests against Trump and ‘authoritarian forces’
Artists and artistic organisations around the US are set to take part in a series of protests and events to speak out against Donald Trump and his administration.According to the New York Times, the acts of “creative resistance” will be known as the Fall of Freedom and will take place on 21 and 22 November.“Our democracy is under attack,” organisers state. “Threats to free expression are rising. Dissent is being criminalized
Stephen Colbert on Ice: ‘Terrorizing communities in the Windy City’
Late-night hosts addressed Trump’s role in the ceasefire in Gaza as his administration sends troops to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Chicago.Stephen Colbert returned to the Late Show with a quick rundown of everything he missed on just one week of holiday. The news last week was “a doozy”, he said. “It’s less ‘we didn’t start the fire’ and more ‘everything’s on fire.’”Colbert provided a partial list of what he missed in a single week: the government shutdown headed into its third week; Trump fired more than 4,000 federal workers; the Department of Justice, under pressure from Trump, charged the New York attorney general, Letitia James, with fraud; Trump sent national guard troops to Chicago and Portland and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act; Trump imposed a stunning 100% tariff on all goods from China, which caused the stock market to have its worst day in six months; and Taylor Swift released her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, to “merely mixed reviews”
French woman in mother of all trademark battles with DC Comics over parenting app Wondermum
A French woman is involved in the mother of all battles with DC Comics for naming her family advice app Wondermum.Lise Sobéron received a letter from the superhero comic book company’s French lawyers on 1 April this year demanding she stop using the name because of its alleged similarity to Wonder Woman.“When I got the letter, I rang my close friends and said: ‘Very funny, guys,’ thinking it was an April fool,” she said. “Then I contacted the lawyers’ office and realised it was no joke. They told me DC Comics objected to the name Wondermum
Louder than Bombs: Joachim Trier’s thorniest film might be his best
Long before Joachim Trier made the Oscar-winning The Worst Person in the World and this year’s festival megahit Sentimental Value, there was 2015’s Louder than Bombs: a far stranger, slipperier film worth watching for Isabelle Huppert’s spectral turn alone. She plays a character also called Isabelle, a renowned war photographer whose secrets haunt her family three years after her sudden death.Her teenage son Conrad (Devin Druid) still daydreams in class about the car crash that claimed her life, imagining her final, panicked moments. His brother Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) and father Gene (Gabriel Byrne) know (and conceal) the truth: that her fateful, split-second swerve was an act of suicide.The film’s cacophony of grief and anxious romance erupt within upstate New York, 6,000km away from the Nordic, millennial anomie of Joachim’s informal Oslo trilogy
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