This has been faster than we had expected, particularly so, given economic growth was slower than we had expected. Employment growth has also been faster than the working-age population has been growing. As a result, the share of the Australian population employed is around its all-time high, which is a good outcome.
Normally, we would have expected this strong employment growth to lead to a decline in the unemployment rate. But the unemployment rate has turned out to be very close to what we had expected and has moved sideways around 5¼ per cent for some time now. So what is going on here?