Unemployment expected to have remained steady in July: Economists

Wednesday, 17 Aug 2016 16:26:49 | Liz Hobday

Job advertisements (ABC News: Nic MacBean)

Economists are predicting a steady jobless rate of 5.8 per cent in the July employment figures to be released by the Bureau of Statistics.

The average estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg is for 10,000 jobs to have been created last month.

But AMP's chief economist Dr Shane Oliver is tipping the jobless rate will edge upwards to 5.9 per cent.

"That's because we're a little bit less optimistic on the jobs growth numbers than the consensus is," he told ABC News.

"In fact we see zero jobs growth for July, whereas the consensus is for a 10,000 change."

Dr Oliver also warned that Australia is facing much higher levels of underemployment.

"The level of underemployment in the economy, that's the people who do have a job but want to work more hours, is quite high," he said.

"If you add unemployment and underemployment together you get a number of 14 per cent."

Unemployment reached a 2016 low of 5.7 per cent in March, before increasing to 5.8 per cent in June.

But the reliability of the official unemployment figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has been criticised of late, due to changes in methodology over the past couple of years that resulted in some wild swings.

The latest jobs figures will be out on the ABS website at 11:30am (AEST) on Thursday.

AustraliaPlus

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Unemployment expected to have remained steady in July: Economists

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