Senate debates

Thursday, 18 February 2021

Questions without Notice

Employment

2:32 pm

Photo of Michaelia CashMichaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McGrath for the question. Indeed, today the labour force figures were released by the ABS for January 2021. They show that in January 2021 the Australian labour market continued to recover from the effects of COVID-19. We saw today that employment increased by 29,100 over the month. That is not just a figure; these are Australians getting into work. That is what this government is all about—putting in place the right economic policies to ensure that businesses are able to keep their employees employed or, as we move into the next phase, bring additional employees into their workplaces.

We saw the unemployment rate decrease from 6.6 per cent to 6.4 per cent. Encouragingly, the increase in employment over the month of January was due entirely to a rise in full-time jobs, which surged by 59,000 in January. Over the last four consecutive months now we've seen full-time employment rise—in fact, it is a total of 277,600—to now stand at 8,820,400 in January 2021. Certainly, Minister Payne has commented to me that, encouragingly, full-time employment for women rose strongly over the month. It was up 32,100.

While employment itself fell by 872,100 between March, when Australia recorded its 100th case of COVID-19, and May, it has since increased by 813,600 over the last eight months. We've now recovered more than 93 per cent of the jobs that were lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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