Australia jobless rate sinks to 5.6% in March

RTTNews reports that the Australian Bureau of Statistics said that the unemployment rate in Australia was a seasonally adjusted 5.6 percent in March. That was lower than expectations for 5.7 percent and down from 5.8 percent in February.

The Australian economy added 70,700 jobs last month to 13,077,600 - far surpassing forecasts for the addition of 35,000 jobs following the increase of 88,700 jobs in February.

Full-time employment saw a decline of 20,800 jobs to 8,874,200 people following the addition of 89,100 jobs a month earlier. Part-time employment surged by 91,500 to 4,203,400 people following the loss of 500 jobs in February.

The participation rate came in at 66.3 percent - again topping expectations for 66.1 percent, which would have been unchanged from the previous month. The rate decreased less than 0.1 percentage point for men to 70.9 percent and increased by 0.4 percentage points for women to 61.8 percent.

The underemployment rate decreased by 0.6 percentage points to 7.9 percent (0.9 percentage points lower than a year ago) and the underutilization rate fell 0.8 percentage points to 13.5 percent.