Woot! Monthly Unemployment Statistics

I didn’t see any press releases about this, but DOS is issuing monthly unemployment reports. I can cross this off the wish list now.

The data has been backdated to the beginning of 2009, and it’s interesting to see that it confirms that the recession reached a bottom around Feb-Mar 2009, with unemployment peaking at 4.0%-4.1% before dropping to 3.2% in June. January 2010’s actually higher at 3.6%.

Other nuggets:

1. The variability in the unemployment rate is surprising, and seems to be driven as much by changes in the labour force as it is by employment.
2. The foreign workforce is one-third of the total labour force, and obviously isn’t counted in the unemployment ratio.
3. Labour force participation rate is just over 60% – do I need to bring up the lack of female participation again?

Technical Notes:

January 2010 unemployment report from Department of Statistics