The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has announced the latest unemployment numbers for Australia.
What did the ABS say?
The unemployment rate worsened from 6.4% in April 2020 to 7.1% in May 2020.
Employment decreased by 227,700 people to 12.15 million people. Full-time employment decreased 89,100 people to 8.54 million people and part-time employment decreased 138,600 people to 3.61 million people. Unemployment increased by 85,700 people to 927,600 people.
Monthly hours worked in all jobs decreased 12.1 million hours to 1,604.7 million hours. The participation rate also decreased, dropping by 0.7% to 62.9%.
The AFR quoted Prime Minister Scott Morrison, “This recession will be written in the stories of those who are experiencing terrible hardship and these statistics today are a reminder to all, not that we need one, that with all the other noise about whatever else is going on, our task is simple. And that is we must get Australians back into work.
“We are working with some of the biggest economic challenges this country has ever faced.”
What are ASX shares doing?
Many of the ASX’s blue chips are down today. The CBA (ASX: CBA) and Westpac (ASX: WBC) share prices are down 0.8%, the Wesfarmers (ASX: WES
) share price is down 1.1%, the BHP (ASX: BHP) share price is down over 1% and so on.
Whilst the market was expecting a decline in employment, this drop was a bit worse than expected. Economists were only expecting job losses of 78,800 and the unemployment rate was expected to be 6.9%. This news makes me motivated to go for shares that don’t rely on the economy as much such as Bubs (ASX: BUB).
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Disclosure: At the time of writing, Jaz doesn’t own shares in any of the businesses mentioned.
