Employment dropped by 65,000 while the number of unemployed Australians slipped by 1000, allowing the jobless rate to plateau, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Thursday revealed

The December decline was the largest monthly fall in employment since the COVID-19 lockdowns.

However, there were still 52,000 more people employed last month than in September as seasonally adjusted employment grew by about 32,000 people per month.

ABS head of labour statistics David Taylor says this reveals reasonably strong underlying growth during 2023.

“The strength in employment in October and November and the fall in December, reflected changes in the timing of employment growth in the last few months of 2023, compared with earlier years,” Mr Taylor said.

“Both the unemployment and underemployment rates remained relatively low and the participation rate and employment-to-population ratio relatively high, suggesting that the labour market remains tight.”

Oxford Economics Australia lead economist Ben Udy said the figures showed softening in the labour market was undoubtedly underway.

“While we’re always cautious to avoid reading too much into a single monthly data point, the deterioration in the labour market is clearly in full swing,” he said.

Before the ABS’s data drop, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said tackling inflation tended to come with a growth in unemployment but that his government was focused on wrangling both.

“Having a three in front of the unemployment figure is very unusual,” he told reporters in Melbourne.

“We are working on ways in which we can put that downward pressure on inflation whilst supporting employment.”