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In January, an estimated 1.44 million Australians were unemployed – the highest rate of unemployment since January 1995.
According to the latest survey from Roy Morgan, 11.3 per cent of the workforce was unemployed in the first month of 2014, up 0.1 per cent from the month before and 0.4 per cent from January 2013.
While Roy Morgan’s results vary a whole 5.5 per cent from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the research house is confident that their survey, which is based on weekly face-to-face interviews including 3,784 in January, is accurate.
Among those who were employed, 1,105,000 Australians were under-employed – i.e. working part time and looking for more work. According to Roy Morgan, this is 13,000 more than a month ago.
Roy Morgan executive chairman Gary Morgan said the results were unsurprising.
“The rise in unemployment was driven by a combination of a large increase in the size of the Australian workforce and not enough jobs being created in January to prevent unemployment rising," he said.
“Although Australian full-time employment surged to a record high 7,715,000, some 851,000 Australians are now looking for full-time work – also a record high.
“These results are not a surprise as full-time employment traditionally surges in January when graduates take up their positions. Full-time employment has increased in 12 out of 13 years since the turn of the century, while part-time employment has declined in nine out of 13 years over the same time period, as staff taken on during the pre-Christmas sales period either become full-time employees or are let go.”
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