Employment numbers are strong in regional Victoria, with Ballarat at the forefront according to new data.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) December 2022 figures show Ballarat’s unemployment rate at 2.7%.
The number is lower than the state-wide regional rate of 2.8% – which itself is the lowest rate in the country.
Geelong, one of the state’s highest jobs achievers since 2014, has reduced its unemployment rate to 2.1 per cent
It’s a big turnaround from June of last year, where the Ballarat unemployment figure was 4%, and from when the unemployment rate peaked in March 2021 at 6.5%.
In September of 2022 financial technology company SmartAsset listed problems associated with unemployment rate figures, including people being considered employed if they have part-time or temporary jobs.
Additionally, Australia’s Trade Economics reports that people looking for full-time jobs rose by 1,400 to 326,100, and the underemployment rate (number of people forced to work in low-paying or low-skill jobs) went up to 6.1% from 5.8%.
With a large number of projects announced during the 2022 Victorian State Election set to come to fruition, the number of jobs being pumped into and undertaken in Ballarat has increased. However, it also signals an uptake of temporary, labour based work.
