The unemployment rate is the share of the labour force that is without work but actively looking for it and available to start. It is published monthly by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the Labour Force survey and is a key input to interest-rate decisions.
The definitions are stricter than everyday usage. The labour force counts only people working or actively seeking work; someone who has stopped looking is not unemployed but outside the labour force altogether. Working even one hour in the survey week counts as employed, which is why the underemployment rate, covering people who want more hours, is published alongside.
The participation rate completes the picture by showing what share of the working-age population is in the labour force at all. A falling unemployment rate is read differently depending on whether participation is rising or people are giving up the search.
The rate is a ratio and both of its terms move. The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines it as the number of unemployed people expressed as a percentage of the labour force, and the labour force as the people who were employed or unemployed. Suppose a labour force of 14,000,000 holding 600,000 unemployed people, figures supposed for the arithmetic: the rate is 4.29 per cent. Now suppose 50,000 of them find work. The numerator falls to 550,000, the denominator does not move, and the rate is 3.93 per cent. Suppose instead the same 50,000 stop looking. They leave the numerator and the denominator together, so the sum is 550,000 divided by 13,950,000, or 3.94 per cent. A ratio that shares a term between top and bottom returns nearly the same answer for two opposite events.
This page defines the measures; the current rate and its history live on Tradergy’s unemployment page, sourced from the ABS Labour Force survey.
Longer read: The measures beyond the unemployment rate. The headline rate counts people with no work who are looking for it. Australia publishes four further measures for everyone that definition steps over - people who have work but not enough of it, people who have been looking for a year, and people who have given up.
This page explains the term; the live unemployment page has the working numbers.
Related terms
GDP · Consumer price index (CPI) · Cash rate · All terms
Primary authority: ABS Labour Force. Definition reviewed against the authority’s published material; this page is reference information, not advice.
Common questions
Who counts as unemployed in the official figures?
A person without any work who actively looked for it in the survey period and was available to start. People not looking, such as full-time students or discouraged jobseekers, sit outside the labour force and are not counted in the rate.
Why can the rate fall even when jobs are scarce?
Because the rate is a ratio of jobseekers to the labour force. If people stop looking for work, they leave the labour force and the measured rate can fall without a single job being created. That is why participation is always read alongside it.
What is underemployment?
People who have work but want and are available for more hours. They are employed in the headline figures, so the unemployment rate alone understates spare capacity in the labour market; the ABS publishes underemployment and underutilisation rates alongside it for that reason.