Employment growth starts to gain traction in Australia

The Australian Bureau of Statistics today released some encouraging November employment figures, highlighted in an increase in full time employment by 30,000 to 7.627 million people. Only 300 part - time roles were created.

More importantly, the number of hours worked rose by 1% which is a positive sign given that a sizeable proportion of companies Australia - wide placed staff on reduced hours during the downturn to avoid retrenching them. There is still some re-absorbtion of under-employed staff to occur, but the figures confirm that Australia is now the strongest economy in the developed world.

95,000 new jobs have been created in Australia in the past 3 months. Both the ANZ Bank and the Olivier Job Advertisements index have been rising steadily for the past three months - compare that with anything seen in the USA, the United Kingdom or Ireland!

The Australian unemployment rate now stands at 5.7%. The USA and the United Kingdom are at or close to 10%, and Ireland's is higher with no end in sight to their employment malaise.