Home topics news Image Credit: Eric Prouzet News News Australia’s unemployment rate drops to 3.6% Yajush Gupta October 20, 2023 In the previous month, Australia’s unemployment rate experienced a decline despite a reduction of nearly 40,000 full-time positions by employers. This development has created mixed signals regarding the necessity of another interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank to curb economic growth. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the unemployment rate in September was 3.6%, down from the reported 3.7% in August. Economists had predicted that the unemployment rate would remain steady at 3.7%. Although employers cut back on full-time positions by 39,900, the overall workforce added a net of 6,600 jobs. The consensus among economists had anticipated a workforce expansion of 20,000 jobs. The pivotal factor in this scenario was the decline in the participation rate, which dropped by 0.2 percentage points to 66.7% from its record levels. Additionally, the total hours worked contracted to 1.93 billion. Kate Lamb, the head of labor statistics at the bureau, noted, “The decline in the unemployment rate in September mainly reflected a higher proportion of people moving from being unemployed to not being in the labor force. Looking over the past two months, average monthly employment growth was 35,000 people, around the average growth we’ve seen in the past year.” The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has kept its key interest rate unchanged for four months, evaluating whether the record series of 12 interest rate increases from May 2022 to June