Australia’s Unemployment Rate–5.4% (Hello Newman)

Today the ABS released the December 2012 numbers, which now means the past 5 years encompasses only the Rudd/Gillard years.

The figures showed the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate shifting from 5.3% to 5.4%. The November figure was revised up from 5.2% to 5.3%, which sounds a big shift, but really it was just revised from 5.23% to 5.25%.

The trend figure was steady at 5.4% (the November 2012 figure was also revised up due to a bit of rounding)

A look at the past 12 months shows the obvious trend – up

So why did the unemployment rate go up?

Well in seasonally adjusted terms employment decreased 5,500 (0.0%) to 11,538,900. In trend terms employment went up by 7,000 jobs

But before we get to the breakdown into full-time and part time, male and female etc, let’s look at the states, because that provides a pretty good answer as to why the unemployment rate went up.

While the national seasonally adjusted job numbers fell 5,500, in Queensland alone there was a loss of 22,900 jobs.

Ouch.

It leads us to this glorious picture:

Yeah. Not pretty.

But look. Let’s be fair. The state employment data at a seasonally adjusted level is really quite erratic, and it if far best to look at the trend rate. And here Queensland actually did have employment growth – a whopping 0.0039%. And here’s how it and the rest of the states line-up:

Well done Campbell Newman and Tim Nicholls. All that austerity is working a treat.

Polytics on Twitter has noted the seriously dopey media release put out by Nicholls, and it deserves quoting:

Treasurer Tim Nicholls said the figures, while disappointing, were reflected in the Mid Year Fiscal and Economic Review which was released in December 2012.

“A weaker global outlook, including certainty about the US ‘fiscal cliff’ and a decline in commodity prices, has seen business remain cautious which has led to a weakening in labour market conditions in Queensland,” Mr Nicholls said.

“This is reflected right across Australia, with 5,500 jobs lost nationwide in December.

So an LNP treasurer is quoting MYEFO to defend his own job numbers! Well yes, I can see why he would… but given everywhere else seemed to be able to cope, it doesn’t really hold much water. And you have to give points to his media team – it’s always good to mention the national jobs loss figure when your own state figure is over 4 times that number! But he did find some sunshine:

Mr Nicholls said the seasonally adjusted estimates seemed volatile and it was important to look at trend figures.

“The trend is much more stable and shows 100 new jobs in December,” he said.

Yep. 100 new jobs. Wow. It’s the boom state!!

OK lets look how Australia would be doing if we ditched QLD (and each of the other state for reference):

Were it not for the successful work of Newman and Nicholls Australia would have an unemployment rate of 5.1%.

This leads to QLD being a drag on the national rate well beyond that of any other state:

And it leads to this difference between the QLD unemployment rate and the national figure:

Try and spin that one into a success for austerity.

***

Having spent a bit of time looking at climate change data anomalies from averages, I thought about looking at the unemployment rate in the same way. So I’ve graphed the unemployment rate compared to the 1978-1998 average (so less than zero means the rate is below that average – which is 8.1%)

What it does show is how nice we are doing.

But if you look at the anomaly of annual employment growth from that 1978-1998 average (1.8%) we see a different picture:

Our current employment growth is pretty weak – below average in fact, and certainly no sign of any warming….

***

OK back to this month’s figures. The employment numbers break down in seasonally adjusted terms as:

Full-time employment decreased 13,800 to 8,112,500 and part-time employment increased 8,300 to 3,426,400.

The trend growth is staying positive, mostly on the back of the big jump in the May and September 2012 figures. This decline in full time jobs has not surprisingly led to an increase in the unemployment rate of people looking for full-time work:

A look at the difference between the two in trend terms shows a slight narrowing:

Any narrowing of this measure is good because a look over the past 30 years shows when the 2 rates are close, the economy is doing well (and when the looking for FT unemployment rate is below the national rate we’re likely in overcooking territory:

Now my favourite measure of how the labour market is fairing is trend growth in hours worked. It shows a slight increase, but until it gets over 0.2%. we can still describe it as weak.

Interestingly – especially given the drop in full time work, in trend terms men’s employment growth has now overtaken women’s:

The employment to population ratio continue its long decline from the peak of April 2008.

It is now at the point it was during the GFC, and yet we are clearly not in a panic stage of a GFC style recession. That in itself displays how the labour market has changed.

Drum Piece: Productivity, Climate Change and Facts

My Drum piece today covers the rather comment-bait friendly topic of climate change.

I thought about writing it when I saw this graph on US temperatures that fairly well shocked me:

Now of course the United States is not the whole world, but for 2012 to be the hottest on record by around 1 degree F or about 0.55C is pretty jaw-dropping.

Then I looked at the world figures going back to 1880. It is all a bit confusing and tough to label all the year, so I have made 2012 the black line and all the red lines are the years from 2000 onwards:

Or linearly in annual mean terms it is:

Now I’m a big fan of looking at things long term to find some context, so I though since I’m 40, I wonder how many of the hottest 40 years have occurred since I have been alive:

Clearly my arrival on the planet has caused some imbalance in the climate. There can be no other explanation.

In my article today I also had a bit of a slap at The Oz’s coverage of the environment. I really should be sanctioned for doing so – it isn’t seemly to shoot fish in a barrel so publicly. In my defence, as I had already submitted my article yesterday morning I was denied the use of Graham Lloyd’s classic headline “Sea rise ‘not linked to warming’ says report”. This meant I could not make use of the great image created by Mark Whalan on Twitter comparing the original article with an AAP report that came out loter int eh day after the co-author of the study Lloyd cited refuted his article completely:

The good thing about most coverage of amazing new discoveries on the non-existence of climate change reported either in The Oz or various denialist blogs that get a run on news.ltd sites is how they invariably arrive about 5-7 days after they have been circulating on environment blogs.

Take the report on sea level rises in yesterday Oz. It was covered on the Real Climate blog a week ago (and with rather a bit more intelligence – though let’s be honest, that ain’t a high bar to get over).

The standard process for me when reading one of these types of stories is to think “Well that sounds interesting… but there’s probably more to it..”, then go online look at various blogs, find the “new research” is a week to a month old and finds almost the opposite of what was reported, or (quite often) was not even examining the areas on which the newspaper report says it has found startling evidence.

Ahh well, at least this time The Oz didn’t publish a response citing the “Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary” on the meaning of the words used in its headline.

****

A commenter linked to this excellent video from NASA on the shift of temperature anomalies:

***

And this morning the thing doing the rounds is that GISS head James Hansen has put out a paper (pdf) that starts with:

Global temperature thus continues at a high level that is sufficient to cause a substantial increase in the frequency of extreme warm anomalies. The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.

This is apparently a big statement. An admission, if you will! Oh my gosh he has admitted what his data found!! The scandal!!!

Of course it’s probably if you want to think that to not read the whole paper because then you’d see things like this:

Indeed, the current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the fact that the first half of the past 10 years had predominately El Nino conditions, while the second half had predominately La Nina conditions (Nino index in Fig. 1). Comparing the global temperature at the time of the most recent three La Ninas (1999-2000, 2008, and 2011-2012), it is apparent that global temperature has continued to rise between recent years of comparable tropical temperature, indeed, at a rate of warming similar to that of the previous three decades. We conclude that background global warming is continuing, consistent with the known planetary energy imbalance, even though it is likely that the slowdown in climate forcing growth rate contributed to the recent apparent standstill in global temperature.

And if that sounds too sciency, there’s an excellent video representation of this from Skeptical Science:

Australian Open Preview

Next week the first tennis Grand Slam of the year begins, a year I have a feeling might see a bit of a changing of the guard.

In my Drum piece this week I had a bit of a squiz at Bernard Tomic and his hopes to be in the top 10 by the end of the year. I should state at the outset that I am not a fan of Tomic. Maybe I just am an old miserable cuss who can’t stand 20 year old braggarts driving around in muscle cars and telling everyone that they’re going to be the greatest player in the game. I’ve never been big on the “you have to support them because they’re Australian”  line either. In Davis Cup? Sure. But tennis is an individual sport, so I’ll pick the individuals who I wish to cheer for.

That said I will be shocked if he’s not in the top 20 by the end of the year. Top 10 is a bigger ask mostly because it requires someone dropping out for him to get in.

Here’s the current top 25 (Tomic is 64, but it’s really around 50 because he skipped the Brisbane International and played in Sydney, so he lost the points he won there last year, but he’ll essentially get them back with a few more from his play in Sydney):

Rank, Name & Nationality	Points	Week Change	Tourn Played
1 Djokovic, Novak (SRB)	12,920	0	18
2 Federer, Roger (SUI)	10,265	0	20
3 Murray, Andy (GBR)	8,000	0	20
4 Nadal, Rafael (ESP)	6,600	0	17
5 Ferrer, David (ESP)	6,505	0	26
6 Berdych, Tomas (CZE)	4,680	0	25
7 Del Potro, Juan Martin (ARG)	4,480	0	23
8 Tsonga, Jo-Wilfried (FRA)	3,375	0	25
9 Tipsarevic, Janko (SRB)	3,090	0	28
10 Gasquet, Richard (FRA)	2,720	0	24
11 Almagro, Nicolas (ESP)	2,515	0	26
12 Monaco, Juan (ARG)	2,430	0	24
13 Isner, John (USA)	2,215	1	26
14 Cilic, Marin (CRO)	2,210	1	24
15 Raonic, Milos (CAN)	2,175	-2	24
16 Simon, Gilles (FRA)	2,145	0	27
17 Wawrinka, Stanislas (SUI)	1,900	0	22
18 Nishikori, Kei (JPN)	1,870	1	23
19 Kohlschreiber, Philipp (GER)	1,770	1	27
20 Dolgopolov, Alexandr (UKR)	1,750	-2	26
21 Haas, Tommy (GER)	1,681	0	20
22 Querrey, Sam (USA)	1,650	0	27
23 Seppi, Andreas (ITA)	1,560	0	30
24 Verdasco, Fernando (ESP)	1,490	0	25
25 Youzhny, Mikhail (RUS)	1,335	0	25

OK the top 4 I can’t see dropping out. Nadal has his injury, but his ranking is protected, and the guy has won Grand Slams on one knee before, so he ain’t dropping down too far yet. Federer I think is the one in danger. Age surely must hit at some point (though I have been thinking this for a few years now). The first 6 months of 2012 were great for him, so he has a ton of points to defend – a semi at the Aust Open, and wins at Indian Wells, Dubai and Rotterdam. The Madrid tournament won’t be on blue clay this year – a surface that seemed to suit his game more than others, so that’ll be tough to defend. That said – it’s a long way for him to fall out of the top 10.

Ferrer, Berdych, Del Potro and Tsonga should be ok – I especially think Del Potro could be the one to rise. Ferrer could fall – and I doubt he’ll be number 5 in 12 months time. Tipsarevic has the win in Chennai in the bank for 12 months, and really doesn’t have much at the Grand Slams to defend – his best is a QF at the US Open. So there’s a fair bit of upside for him. But he is 28, so maybe he’s peaked. Gasquet has the win in Doha in his bank, and he made the 4th round of every Grand Slam, so a QF in any of them will give him 180 extra points – and every extra point put you further away from those trying to catch you. He also has made a solid and steady rise up the rankings from being number 30 this time 2 years ago. At the age of 26 he would be feeling like the next 2 years are his peak.

Then come the others in the top 20. Roanic, Cilic, Nishikori and Dolgopolov are the “young ones” (if 24 is young in the case of Cilic and Dolgopolov) on the rise. Both Cilic and Nishikori made the QF of last year’s Aussie Open, and both also missed the US Open. So while they have big points to defend in the next fortnight, they won’t have any when they get to Flushing Meadows. Nishikori didn’t make it past the 4th round of any Master event last year, so there’s points there to be made.

Those four are guys on the improve, for Tomic to make the Top 10 he not only has to displace one of the current top 10 he also has to get in front of these 4 (and the other 6 in the top 20). Tomic’s current rankings points are loaded mostly with the 4th round at last year’s Aussie Open. In his favour are that he was poor at Wimbledon, so he can improve there.

As I say, top 20 is a big show – but I will go so far as to say anything less than top 20 by the end of the year will be a disappointment. Top 10 would be a very good effort – certainly possible, but the year is long, and he had a great Australian summer last year as well, so it’s in the long months away from Australia where he needs to improve.

OK to to the Australian Open draws.

Djokovic has a quarter that has him set to play number 5 seed Berdych in the QF. To get there Djokovic might have to play young USA up and comer Ryan Harrison. Harrison at 20 years of age is a few steps behind the same aged Tomic at the moment, but the match would be a nice one to watch to see where both are at. Wawrinka or Querry in the 4th Round should be no danger for Djokovic. Berdych meanwhile will have to go through Juan Moncao or Verdasco to get to the QF. He should.

In the same half of the draw is David Ferrer who is due to meet Tipsaravic in the QF. Ferrer will likely have to go the dangerous Ivo Karlovic, Baghdahtis, Mikail Youzny or Nishikori. Depending on Nishikori’s fitness, I’m thinking he could be the upset factor here.

Tipsarevic faces Leyton Hewitt first up. I don’t think an upset is out of the question, but I wouldn’t put money on it. In his 16th of the draw I’m interested to see how Grigor Dimitrov goes. He faces number 32 seed Julien Bennetau in the first round. I’d like to see an upset.

In the bottom half we start with Del Potro who is slated to meet Andy Murray in the QF. I can’t see anyone stopping Del Potro getting to the final 8. Similarly Murray has a cruisey draw. Their QF would be a cracker.

Roger Federer has easily the toughest draw of the top seeds. He is slated to meet Tsonga in the QF, but to get there he needs to beat firstly the young Frenchman Benoit Paire, then probably the veteran Davydenko. The 3rd round is tough – likely a very in-form Bernard Tomic, and then a 4th round if he makes it against Raonic. It really is a case of the old man having to defend himself against the wannabe future. Federer’s run of 34 consecutive Grand Slam QF’s will face a supreme test. To be honest I am not sure he’ll get there. If he does it’ll mean he is playing very good tennis, and I'd back him against Tsonga, who has a pretty clear run to the QF.

The toughest aspect with Federer is he hasn’t played any tournaments of late so there’s a risk he’ll be too rusty in the early rounds. A few years ago he might have got away with it, but this year, with his draw, he’ll need to be sharp from the get go.

And that will bring us to the second week.

In the women’s?

Serena Williams. She might even lose a set along the way.