Service jobs may explain outsized rise in part-time work

A strong rise in services industries may go some way to explaining last month's job surge driven by part-time work.

Economists have been sceptical of Bureau of Statistics August jobs data, released last week, that showed an estimated gain of 121,000 positions.

Around 107,000 of those jobs were part-time according to the official estimates, adding to the disbelief around the figures.

Many economists dismissed them as mostly due to sample rotation and definitional changes or statistical error.

However, TD Securities head of Asia-Pacific research Annette Beacher says the bureau's detailed statistical figures show that August's employment gains were driven by industries that employ a lot of part-timers.

"The breakdown by industry could add some legitimacy to the August report," she wrote in a note on the data.

Between May and August the biggest gains in employment were in education (32,000), health care (30,000), retail trade (26,000) and arts and recreation (24,000) - all service industries with a reasonably high proportion of part-time and casual workers.

Over the past year trends have been broadly similar, with education and health care dominating, although retail and arts/recreation have not been as strong as in the most recent quarter.

Construction has benefitted from a residential and commercial building boom offsetting the weakness in mining engineering, while agriculture also added a lot of workers.

Unsurprisingly, mining and the public sector have accounted for the vast bulk of jobs lost over the last 12 months.

Ms Beacher says next month's employment data will be important to watch closely.

"Obviously the next labour market report for September (October 9) will be a nail biter – will we see a corrective slump, or confirmation that perhaps the retail/health/education sectors are ramping up part-time employment to meet demand for services," she concluded.