Unemployment stays steady through February at 5.4%

The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.4% in February according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

This a better-than-expected result, with 25 economists polled by Bloomberg this week forecasting the unemployment rate to rise to 5.5%.

The number of people employed increased by 71,500 to 11,628,300, primarily due to an increase in male part-time employment and female full-time and part-time employment.

The number of people unemployed increased by just 400 people to 660,000.

There was an increase in the seasonally adjusted aggregate hours worked, up 11.3 million hours to 1,632.8 million hours.

The seasonally adjusted labour force participation rate increased by 0.3 percentage points to 65.3%.

The underemployment rate was 7.1% in February which, combined with the unemployment rate, gives a labour force underutilisation of 12.5% in February.