Tens of thousands of West Australians out of work as state reaches historic unemployment high
About 34,000 West Australians lost their job in the last month, with the state's jobless rate reaching a 26-year high in June.
Seasonally adjusted figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday show WA's unemployment rate rose to 8.7 per cent last month, a 0.6 percentage point increase over May.
Treasurer Ben Wyatt.Credit:Marta Pascual Juanola
It is the highest unemployment rate recorded since 1994, but estimates show it could be much higher if it weren't for the federal government's JobKeeper wage subsidy.
The hike has seen WA almost top the nation as the state with the highest jobless rate, coming second only to South Australia, where unemployment climbed to 8.8 per cent.
The dire economic figures echo those released by the Australian Taxation Office on Tuesday, which showed WA fared worse than the national average in terms of jobs and wages lost during the COVID-19 pandemic based on payroll data.
Nationwide, the jobless rate hit a 22-year high, with almost 1 million Australians out of work in June. The national unemployment rate is currently sitting at 7.4 per cent, its highest level since late 1998, and has climbed by 2.3 percentage points since February.
The ABS said 992,000 Australians were now formally unemployed, the highest number recorded since the introduction of monthly unemployment figures in 1978. It was a 69,300 increase on the number recorded in May.
The data shows some positive signs for the jobs market with total employment up by 210,800 to 12.3 million. However, full-time employment dropped by 38,100 people to be under 8.5 million.
Under-employment also fell by 1.4 percentage points to 11.7 per cent, with the ABS reporting many full-time workers were now getting their regular hours.
The unemployment rate was pushed up by a 1.3 percentage point lift in the participation rate, a sign that people are again looking for work. Monthly hours worked lifted by 69.3 million.
The bureau's head of labour statistics, Bjorn Jarvis, said the easing of coronavirus restrictions had resulted in more people in employment or more actively looking for work.
"Overall, the percentage of people employed in Australia increased 1 percentage point to 59.2 per cent, up from a low of 58.2 per cent in May," he said.
"In June, around 24 per cent of the fall in employment through to May had been regained."
with Shane Wright