Economists doubt employment figures SHANE WRIGHT ECONOMICS EDITOR The West Australian September 12, 2014, 5:27 am There are doubts over the accuracy of the nations statistical agency after it reported the biggest one-month jump in jobs on record. The Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday reported a sharp fall in the unemployment which, through August, fell 0.3 percentage points to 6.1 per cent. At the heart of its figures was a reported 106,000 record jump in part-time workers - or almost 4000 jobs a day. Total employment rose by 121,000, the biggest lift since the bureau started measuring employment monthly. In South Australia, the jobless rate fell 1.3 percentage points from 7.2 per cent to 5.9 per cent. In WA it edged down to 5 per cent from 5.2 even though the number of people in full-time work fell by 2400. Despite the huge increase in employment, the hours worked across the economy barely lifted. The big fall came after an unexpectedly big jump in the jobless rate in July when the bureau put it at a 12-year high of 6.4 per cent. The bureau conceded it had doubts about the figures, revealing it went through a series of statistical tests to confirm its result. It is 95 per cent confident total employment through August increased by between 63,400 and 178,600. Though the Australian dollar jumped more than half a cent immediately on the figures, it lost much of that as analysts checked the figures. They used research notes to question the result and some suggested the jobless rate needed to be taken with large grains of salt. NAB economist Spiros Papadopoulos said the size of the rise in jobs was too hard to believe. He said it was amazing that so many people found work yet the total hours worked barely budged. He said though part-time hours rose 1.8 per cent in the month, the number of part-time jobs jumped 3 per cent. So the extra part-timers were apparently not doing a lot of work, he said. Even ministers were circumspect about the figures with Eric Abetz and Joe Hockey warning that jobs data can be volatile. https://au.news.yahoo/thewest/latest/a/24971878/economists-doubt-employment-figures/
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 13:15:01 +0000
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