Tag Archives: unemployment

Remarkable turnarounds for Townsville, Mackay, and Cairns

In my upcoming Brisbane Club presentation on Tuesday, one chart I’ll show is of selected Queensland regional unemployment rates, highlighting how the economic recovery generally and a booming mining sector have translated into some extraordinarily low unemployment rates in some … Continue reading

Posted in Cairns, Labour market, Mackay, Townsville | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Super-high coal royalties to help address Qld hospitals crisis

As I predicted earlier this month (see John McCarthy’s 13 May InQld article), the Queensland Government will be boosting health spending in the upcoming budget to deal with the hospitals crisis, and to a large extent it’s able to do … Continue reading

Posted in Budget, Labour market, Macroeconomy | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Unemployment and state budgets update

On Monday, I appeared on the 612 ABC Brisbane Radio Drive program (from 2:09:00) to chat with Kelly Higgins-Devine about how we estimate the unemployment rate, a matter of interest that day obviously due to the Opposition Leader being unable … Continue reading

Posted in Budget, Labour market, Macroeconomy | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Shadow lockdown and supply-chain crisis – 9.30am Qld time livestream

I’m going live at 9.30am Queensland time this morning (Friday 21/1/22) to discuss the big economic issues of the week, particularly: Australia’s strong pre-omicron labour force figures from the ABS for December, although they weren’t much comfort given the current … Continue reading

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Qld Economic Outlook for 2022

Prior to the omicron outbreak, I was very confident about the Queensland economic outlook for 2022. I’m still reasonably confident that the state economy will perform well over 2022, but nothing is certain of course. There’s been a bit of … Continue reading

Posted in Labour market, Macroeconomy, Mining | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Livestream featuring US jobless claims, Aussie GDP + farewell to Tony Makin

I did a livestream earlier today with my regular co-host Tim Hughes on the latest economic news of the week, including the latest US initial jobless claims confirming a strong US economy, the impact of the omicron COVID-variant on equity … Continue reading

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Livestream on US inflation, Aussie jobs data, and Qld’s low vax rate

Yesterday afternoon I did my first livestream, covering: the growing concern internationally about accelerating inflation, prompted by the latest US CPI figures; the September ABS Labour Force data revealing big drops in hours worked and workforce participation in the locked-down … Continue reading

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Good sign the Great COVID Panic will end in Qld soon

A few weeks ago I observed that it took the NRL Grand Final for the Queensland Government to adopt a more rational approach to the pandemic, and now, thankfully, there are further signs of rationality from the Government, with the … Continue reading

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Lockdowns cause hours worked to fall below pre-pandemic levels

In August, according to the latest ABS Labour Force data, total hours worked were well below March 2020 levels in NSW (-11.1%), and they were 2.9% below nationally and 0.9% below in Queensland (see the chart below). Victoria was slightly … Continue reading

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Qld economy should cope better than NSW and Vic. economies, but our tourism regions will suffer badly

The ongoing economic fallout of the Delta outbreak continued this week, regardless of the statistical anomaly, due to people leaving the workforce, that was the reported 4.6% national unemployment rate for July. Queensland had the highest unemployment rate (5.2%) among … Continue reading

Posted in Cairns, Macroeconomy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment