Unemployment jumps ‘quite sharply’, passing 4 percent with scarcely any jobs added in January

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australia’s jobless rate has risen above 4% for the first time in 2 years. Unemployment has been edging up for months as employers slash payrolls and cutback on recruitment in response to 13 interest rate hikes.

Transcript

00:00 Finding work in any industry can be challenging, especially in some sectors like the arts.

00:07 It's genuinely frightening. A lot of us aren't sleeping. We're finding this to be harder than ever.

00:14 As a freelance stage manager, Jordan is finding that secure work is hard to come by.

00:20 I have about 15 hours of work in the next month, and nothing especially promising about the future.

00:29 Nothing particularly promising about anything else coming along.

00:32 Australia's unemployment rate rose to 4.1% in January, which is a two-year high.

00:38 More than 22,000 people were added to the jobless queue, while only 500 jobs were created.

00:45 And the number of people currently working or actively looking for work remained steady.

00:50 These figures were clearly worse than expected, but I think it's important not to overreact.

00:55 4.1% is still very low by historical standards. The five-year average before COVID was about 5.5%.

01:05 Unemployment has risen more quickly than many economists had expected.

01:09 They say there's a chance Australia's economy could face a sharper slowdown,

01:13 and that would strengthen the case for the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates.

01:17 But for Stuart Moran, finding work as a project manager is not easy.

01:23 I've been applying for 40 to 60 jobs a day. That's kind of totaling 2,000 jobs,

01:29 and I'm barely getting any response at all.

01:31 With more than 100 applicants for each role, the competition is intense.

01:36 I've barely had 10 in-person interviews.

01:39 Playing solo in a tough economy.

01:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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