Australia’s jobless rate has risen above 4% for the first time in 2 years. Unemployment has been edging up for months as employers slash payrolls and cutback on recruitment in response to 13 interest rate hikes.
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00:00 Finding work in any industry can be challenging, especially in some sectors like the arts.
00:07 It's genuinely frightening. A lot of us aren't sleeping. We're finding this to be harder than ever.
00:14 As a freelance stage manager, Jordan is finding that secure work is hard to come by.
00:20 I have about 15 hours of work in the next month, and nothing especially promising about the future.
00:29 Nothing particularly promising about anything else coming along.
00:32 Australia's unemployment rate rose to 4.1% in January, which is a two-year high.
00:38 More than 22,000 people were added to the jobless queue, while only 500 jobs were created.
00:45 And the number of people currently working or actively looking for work remained steady.
00:50 These figures were clearly worse than expected, but I think it's important not to overreact.
00:55 4.1% is still very low by historical standards. The five-year average before COVID was about 5.5%.
01:05 Unemployment has risen more quickly than many economists had expected.
01:09 They say there's a chance Australia's economy could face a sharper slowdown,
01:13 and that would strengthen the case for the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates.
01:17 But for Stuart Moran, finding work as a project manager is not easy.
01:23 I've been applying for 40 to 60 jobs a day. That's kind of totaling 2,000 jobs,
01:29 and I'm barely getting any response at all.
01:31 With more than 100 applicants for each role, the competition is intense.
01:36 I've barely had 10 in-person interviews.
01:39 Playing solo in a tough economy.
01:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]