Stephen Koukoulas
speaker
2,355 appearances
24 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 20 Sep
Stephen Koukoulas’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 24 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 6.
Appearances
childcare payments, these sorts of things.
So back in the olden days, women were not
counted as being employed and they weren't looking for jobs so they weren't unemployed even though they were doing home duties but now they're in the paid workforce so that drives the participation rate up or down according to the cycle and if you're you know very wealthy or you know things are good the economy's good uh you might say i'm going to have some time out of the workforce and have a holiday or whatever the case may be because i know if i need a job i can find one easily
It can be because part-time and full-time have just got the definition.
You can have actually no change in employment.
Just, for example, on Thursday we get employment zero, no change in employment.
You think, oh, gosh, that's a weak number.
But if what was happening, for example –
people who were working part-time were actually working an extra 10 hours per week.
Then aggregate that because the economy was strong and their bosses were saying to them, hey, Michael, instead of 20 hours a week, we want you to work 30 hours a week because we're really busy.
That would be shown up in the hours worked in the economy.
So employment might be steady at 14.5 million people, thereabouts, but hours worked would go up, which is why the Reserve Bank and others refer to
the change in hours worked as another barometer of how strong or how weak the labour market is.
Or if, for example, you worked fewer hours because, you know, for whatever reason, economic reasons, you'd have employment steady but hours worked declining, even without an increase in the unemployment rate.
Correct.
You nailed it.
And the participation rate falling is another sign.
So, and interestingly, on that score, ahead of Thursday's labour force release, we have had a slowing in the growth of hours worked, even though employment...
apart from that monthly volatility, still growing at about 1%, 1.5%.
So still a couple of hundred thousand jobs being created in the last year.
Showing 1021–1040 of 2,355 · page 52 of 118
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