21232 – Employment Growth

Employment Growth (21232) measures how fast the volume of work in Australia is growing: the change over the year in the number of filled jobs and in the total hours worked. Higher readings mean faster growth. It belongs to the Employment & GDP family (21230) and is read in its own right; it does not compose into 21230.

Jobs and hours are read together because each misses something the other catches: the number of jobs can rise while each worker’s hours fall, and hours can rise with no new jobs. The level of labour market slack is read separately in Labour Market Tightness (21231).

Primary metric: Node Z-Score (Z₂₁₂₃₂)

Metric typology: equal-weighted mean of two standardised growth rates, each against its own 2011–2025 baseline (60 quarters, sample standard deviation). Levels of jobs and hours rise with the size of the economy, so the node reads their growth.

Tier-1 sovereign statistical releases. No commercial data provider dependency exists within this node.

The chart shows the node’s reading in every quarter, each input measured against its 2011–2025 baseline.

At +0.2795σ (Q2 2026), the volume of work is growing a little faster than its 2011–2025 average: filled jobs rose 2.58% over the year and hours worked 2.35%. Position. 68.3, ranked against 124 quarters since September 1995.

The reading is the highest since September 2023 and the second quarter of acceleration, after +0.1239σ in March 2026 and readings below zero through the second half of 2025. The highest reading on record, +2.9905σ in June 2021, and the lowest, −3.7094σ in June 2020, both record the pandemic.

The other nodes of the Employment & GDP family. Only Labour Market Tightness (21231) and Growth per Person (21235) compose into Employment & GDP (21230); the others are read in their own right.