There wasn’t much of great interest in the new ABS Labour Force data for Queensland today. While the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell from 6.3 per cent in June to 5.9 per cent in July, I suspect this was just noise in the data, as I was very skeptical about the reported surge in the seasonally adjusted rate in June (see Don’t read too much into one month’s unemployment figures – Qld data pretty volatile). The data show the economy remains sluggish, but there doesn’t appear to be any reason to revise the Queensland Treasury forecast of 6 per cent unemployment over 2013-14 yet, with the trend unemployment rate only increasing marginally to 6.1 per cent from 6.0 per cent. Below are charts of the unemployment rate data and the change in the monthly seasonally adjusted data, illustrating the volatility in this data series.
For more on today’s unemployment data, see:
Queensland Economy Watch 