Our estimates can change for many reasons: data revisions can result in short term changes; capital purchases or labour market participation can result in changes over the medium term; and institutional developments can result in long-run changes.
Finally, unemployment has started to fall, but the improvement, from a peak of 15 per cent in early 2012 to 14.6 per cent by year end, is small and partially due to net emigration. For a small and very open economy such as ours, domestic economic conditions are critically influenced by the external economic environment.