SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s unemployment rate ticked up to a 22-year high of 7.5% in July with a fresh wave of coronavirus infections in the southeastern state of Victoria further threatening the outlook.
Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed employment jumped by 114,700 in July, on top of a hefty 210,800 new jobs the previous month. But the surge was still not enough to meet the ballooning labour supply, with the participation rate rising by 0.6 percentage points to 64.7%.
As a result, unemployment rose from 7.4% in June, marking the highest since November 1998. The number of people out of work, available to work and actively looking for work topped one million for the first time ever, the data showed.
(Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
