{"id":209978,"date":"2025-10-13T10:41:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T10:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/209978\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T10:41:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T10:41:20","slug":"3-2-million-aussies-are-unemployed-or-underemployed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/209978\/","title":{"rendered":"3.2 million Aussies are unemployed or underemployed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roy Morgan has released its labour force estimates for September, which reported a solid decline in both unemployment and underemployment.<\/p>\n

According to Roy Morgan, unemployment decreased by 37,000 to 1,739,000 (down 0.3% to 10.8% of the workforce) while under-employment dropped 243,000 to 1,499,000 (down 1.6% to 9.3%).<\/p>\n

However, as illustrated below, both unemployment and underemployment have trended up sharply this year:<\/p>\n

\"Roy<\/p>\n

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Overall, 20.1% of Australia\u2019s labour force was estimated to be unemployed or underemployed in September 2025, up 1.4% from September 2024.<\/p>\n

Roy Morgan also reported that 3.2 million Australians were either unemployed or underemployed in September. In fact, \u201coverall labour under-utilisation remains stuck above 3.2 million for a fourth straight month and has averaged a high 3.3 million so far this year\u201d, noted Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan.<\/p>\n

The increase in unemployed and underemployed above 3 million reflects a combination of softer labour market conditions alongside the strong rise in the nation\u2019s labour supply amid record net overseas migration.<\/p>\n

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Roy Morgan estimates that there were 23,140,000 people in Australia aged 14+ in September 2025 (up 1,766,000 from September 2022\u2014more than double the pre-pandemic average of 840,000 over a three-year period since 1999).<\/p>\n

The workforce in September 2025 was 16,058,000 (up 1,151,000 from three years ago)\u2014comprising 14,319,000 employed Australians (up 614,000) and 1,739,000 unemployed Australians (up 537,000).<\/p>\n

Roy Morgan CEO Michelle Levine also reported that the labour market has shifted in the past year from full-time employment to part-time employment.<\/p>\n

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\u201cA comparison to a year ago shows the nature of the employment market is shifting with full-time employment down 150,000 from September 2024, but part-time employment increasing 164,000 over the same period \u2013 a net growth in overall employment of 14,000\u2033, Levine noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis shift is clear when looking at the share of employed Australians in full-time and part-time employment. The share of employed Australians in part-time employment is now 35.6%, up 1.1% points from a year ago, compared to 64.4% now in full-time employment\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is important to note that Roy Morgan effectively counts someone as unemployed if they want a job but are unable to get one. Therefore, it is a broader definition than the ABS\u2019 stricter unemployment measure, which explains why Roy Morgan\u2019s is always higher.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the trend rise in Roy Morgan unemployment, illustrated more clearly by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro<\/a> below, and the pivot to part-time suggest that Australia\u2019s labour force continues to soften.<\/p>\n

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\"Roy<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, a disorderly handover from non-market (government-funded) sector job creation to the private (market sector) is the biggest risk to the labour market.<\/p>\n

According to the ABS, this unprecedented boom in government-funded jobs has driven Australia\u2019s job growth and historically low unemployment rate.<\/p>\n

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\"filled<\/p>\n

The non-market sector, comprising public and private service providers that rely on government funding, accounted for around 60% of total job creation since the pandemic and nearly 80% of job creation over the past two years.<\/p>\n

This non-market job growth has been driven by the $52 billion blowout in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which has fueled the growth of carer jobs.<\/p>\n

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\"Carer<\/p>\n

State and federal budgets are stretched, resulting in cost-cutting and austerity\u2014neither of which is helpful for non-market employment.<\/p>\n

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State and federal governments are now seeking to trim costs and downsize their workforces.<\/p>\n

The federal government is also under immense pressure to reduce the cost of the NDIS, which has been the primary driver of the large increase in non-market employment.<\/p>\n

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With Australia\u2019s private sector failing to fire up and the government continuing to import hundreds of thousands of migrant workers each year, there is a real possibility that the country\u2019s unemployment rate will rise well beyond the RBA\u2019s forecast.<\/p>\n

\"RBA<\/p>\n

As a result, rising unemployment is also the single greatest downside risk for Australian interest rates.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roy Morgan has released its labour force estimates for September, which reported a solid decline in both unemployment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-209978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}