{"id":684655,"date":"2026-05-21T06:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/684655\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T06:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:55:09","slug":"australia-news-live-unemployment-hits-highest-level-since-2021-as-iran-war-rate-rises-impact-jobs-market-israeli-ambassador-to-front-dfat-over-flotilla-footage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/684655\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia news LIVE: Unemployment hits highest level since 2021 as Iran war, rate rises impact jobs market; Israeli ambassador to front DFAT over flotilla footage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Treasurer Jim Chalmers has just spoken to the media in Canberra, addressing the latest labor force data.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNationally, the unemployment rate ticked up a bit, as we have been expecting it to do, but we\u2019ve still created more than 1.2 million jobs in the four years that this government has been in office,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Treasurer Jim Chalmers.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/cc3c681894ca23368c22a3971982fcbae06b1f2c.jpeg\"  class=\"sc-d34e428-1 ldCIuB\"\/>Treasurer Jim Chalmers.Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur labor market remains a very considerable source of strength when you consider what\u2019s coming at us from around the world, so to have unemployment in the mid-fours in the context of all of this global economic volatility, in the context of interest rate rises playing out in our economy, our labour market remains a very considerable source of strength, even with the tick up that we\u2019ve seen in the numbers today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When asked if he thought the unemployment rate rising would prompt the Reserve Bank to put interest rate rises on hold, Chalmers said he wasn\u2019t going to give the RBA \u201cfree advice\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019ll obviously factor this in to the decision that they take at the next opportunity. They\u2019ll factor in all of the global uncertainty and all of the domestic conditions as well, including the unemployment rate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI saw the market expectations changed a bit since the labour force data came out, but I don\u2019t want to engage in a running commentary on their considerations. We expected the unemployment rate to tick up a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Treasurer Jim Chalmers has just spoken to the media in Canberra, addressing the latest labor force data. \u201cNationally,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-684655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684655","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=684655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}