August 2013 Employment

Employment in August rose by 173k (‘000):

Some of the increase was due to a lot more people looking for work and finding it (log annual changes):

That’s a pretty stunning increase – 8.9% in annual log terms for August. The big lump in 2011 was due to a registration exercise for illegal workers at the end of 2010. While there’s currently a similar exercise being undertaken, it started in September i.e. after the big jump in the labour force occurred.

This is somewhat corroborated by an unusual increase in the participation rate:

I haven’t checked the quarterly series, but that looks like the highest on record.

Unfortunately, more people looking for work doesn’t mean they all get jobs:

The number of unemployed climbed by 20.6k to 441.8k:

On the whole, I think job growth has been pretty solid, quite at odds with the middling growth in the economy proper. I’m curious though what the employment dynamics are in the informal economy (DOS has a new survey here), and in the illegal foreign workforce.

Technical Notes:

August 2013 Employment Report from the Department of Statistics (warning: pdf link)