Australia’s unemployment rate has risen to 4.5 per cent in September in seasonally adjusted terms according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
However, separate data from research firm Roy Morgan – which uses a broader definition of unemployment – showed a decline.
In a media release this week, the ABS reported that the rise in September unemployment followed a revised 4.3 per cent recorded in August. The revision is a slight lift from 4.2 per cent.
ABS head of labour statistics Sean Crick said this is the highest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate recorded since November 2021.
“There were 34,000 more unemployed people in September,” Crick said. “The number of employed people also grew, up 15,000 in the same period.
“As a result of these increases, the participation rate rose by 0.1 percentage points to 67.0 per cent, although this is below the record high of 67.2 per cent we saw at the beginning of the year.”
The employment-to-population ratio remained steady at 64.0 per cent.
A rise in both males and females seeking work contributed to the rise in the number of unemployed people in September. The number of unemployed males rose by 24,000 to 370,000, while the number of unemployed females rose by 10,000 to 314,000.
Full-time employment rose by 9,000, which ABS noted was a result of full-time employed males increasing by 23,000 and full-time employed females decreasing by 15,000.
Part-time employment rose by 6,000. This was driven by more females employed part-time, up 19,000, while males employed part-time fell 13,000.
For the same month, Roy Morgan reported that its ‘real’ unemployment decreased by 37,000 people to 1.739 million. This is down 0.3 per cent and now makes up 10.8 per cent of the workforce.
The difference is because the ABS uses international labour standards that classify people as unemployed only if they’ve actively looked for work in the past four weeks, while Roy Morgan includes anyone who says they are looking for work, regardless of timing.
Meanwhile, under-employment across Australia dropped by 243,000 people to 1.499 million, which is down 1.6 per cent to 9.3 per cent.
Roy Morgan estimates the overall workforce size – which adds together the employed and unemployed – at 16,058,000 to be exact, which is up 66,000 on a month ago, and representing 69.4 per cent of Australians aged 14 and up.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said the drop in unemployment was driven by a large fall in part-time unemployment which fell by 57,000 people to 1,044,000 and correlated to a rise in part-time employment, which increased 105,000 to 5,097,000.
“In September the overall picture shows the movements in the Australian labour market were the most positive since the re-election of the Albanese Government in early May – rising employment (+103,000) and falling labour under-utilisation (-280,000),” Levine said.
“A comparison to a year ago shows the nature of the employment market is shifting with full-time employment down 150,000 from September 2024, but part-time employment increasing 164,000 over the same period – a net growth in overall employment of 14,000.
“This shift is clear when looking at the share of employed Australians in full-time and part-time employment. The share of employed Australians in part-time employment is now 35.6 per cent, up 1.1 percentage points from a year ago, compared to 64.4 per cent now in full-time employment.
Levine said the continuing high level of unemployment and under-employment in the Australian labour force must be a key focus for the Albanese Government as it considers what policies to prioritise over the next few years.
Roy Morgan’s data has been compiled from weekly interviews of 980,365 Australians aged 14 and over between December 2008 and September 2025 and includes 5,876 telephone and online interviews in September 2025.
The ABS also compiles its results from regular surveys.