With the government downgrading its June 2010 unemployment expectation to 6.75% it appears we will be creeping there slowly given we have been around 5.8% for much of the last 6 months. This is largely thanks to a drift from full time to part time employment and of course the downside is that on average we are working much less and therefore earning less.
The number of unemployed persons in Australia is now 669,000 (increasing by 34.3% over the last 12 months) and this is the highest since late 2001. From an Australian perspective, we must be thankful thta we are no where near the horrific unemployment levels of the US at 10.2%…things must be very tough there with small signs of recovery but most economists believe that US recovery will exclude employment growth.