In April, full-time employment in Queensland continued to recover and is now back above the level that prevailed at the time of the last State election in January 2015, in terms of the trend data that Queensland Treasury prefers to report (see chart below).

As I commented in a post last month, it appears very likely the Palaszczuk Government will be able to campaign on the basis of employment growth being stronger during its term of government than it was during the previous government’s term (see chart below, which includes part-time as well as full-time jobs).

Of course, as other commentators have pointed out, a significant part of the employment growth has been due to the creation of new public sector jobs, some of which may be of dubious economic value.

For more on the latest ABS jobs figures released yesterday, which were generally good news for Queensland and are consistent with improving business confidence figures reported by CCIQ, see Pete Faulkner’s post:

QLD unemployment rate stays static, but this is a strong report for the State

Finally, I should note that a downswing in the residential construction sector will likely detract from growth somewhat over the remainder of 2017.