Australia’s unemployment rate has fallen sharply to 3.7 per cent, a large drop from last month’s figure of 4.1 per cent.
The decrease comes on the back of the economy adding a significant 116,000 new jobs in February, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
“With employment growing by around 116,000 people, and the number of unemployed falling by 52,000 people, the unemployment rate fell to 3.7 per cent,” Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labour statistics, said.
“This was around where it had been six months earlier.”
The ABS said the larger-than-expected drop was due in part to a high number of people who had found work in December and January but whose jobs didn’t actually start until February.
“In 2022 and 2023, around 4.3 per cent of employed people in February had not been employed in January,” Jarvis said.
“In 2024 this was higher, at 4.7 per cent, and well above the pre-pandemic average for 2015 to 2020 of around 3.9 per cent.
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“In contrast, we again only saw around 3.1 per cent of employed people in January leaving employment by February, which was similar to last year and has remained relatively constant over time.
“This shows that there is a wider gap than we would usually see between the numbers of people entering employment and leaving employment.
“In addition, in looking ahead to next month, the number of people in February waiting to start work in March was back to around what we would usually see.”
