Fact check: Labor claims unemployment in Qld highest in 11 years
Queensland Labor has made jobs and unemployment one of the key areas of attack in the lead up to the January 31 state election.
Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk has repeatedly criticised the Newman Government for failing to lower the unemployment rate, claiming Queensland's figures are dire.
"Our jobless rate is the highest for 11 years... There are almost 31,000 more Queenslanders without a job since March 2012," she said at Labor's campaign launch.
Fact Check takes a look at Queensland's unemployment figures.
Measuring unemployment
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has advised Fact Check that trend data, as opposed to seasonally adjusted data, is a preferable measure.
According to Labor's "Working Queensland" policy document, the party has also relied on trend data to track Queensland's performance.
According to the ABS's labour force trend data for December 2014, Queensland's unemployment rate is 6.6 per cent.
That figure represents 163,700 Queenslanders currently unemployed. It is the most recent available data, released on January 15, 2015.
Is the jobless rate the highest in 11 years?
ABS trend and seasonally adjusted data both show the last time Queensland's unemployment rate was as high as 6.6 per cent was in July and August 2003, when it was 6.7 and 6.5 per cent respectively.
Are almost 31,000 more Queenslanders unemployed?
Ms Palaszczuk also claimed that there were "almost 31,000 more Queenslanders without a job since March 2012."
The ABS trend data does show that there were 30,900 more Queenslanders unemployed in December 2014 than in March 2012, when Campbell Newman won in a landslide election.
Unemployment: a national problem?
Across Australia the unemployment rate for all persons - whether looking for full time or part time work - is 6.2 per cent.
Looking at the same time period Ms Palaszczuk referred to at Labor's campaign launch, Australia's unemployment rate as a whole has mirrored Queensland's experience.
Ross Guest, a professor of economics at Queensland's Griffith University, told Fact Check that while Ms Palaszczuk had her numbers straight, Queensland's experience had largely mirrored the Australian economy as a whole.
"It's also true of the whole of Australia because of international factors. (It's) not much to do with the Queensland government.
"In fact state governments have very little control over unemployment in their states," Professor Guest said.
He said international conditions were also to blame.
"Slowdown in China dampens demand for Queensland's resources and weak economic activity in Europe does the same.
"These are the main factors driving the unemployment rate upwards across the country."
Associate Professor Philip Bodman from the faculty of business, economics and law at the University of Queensland agrees that international economic conditions are a key factor driving Queensland unemployment figures.
"Our terms of trade have fallen by 20 per cent, related to downsizing in the mining industry," he said. "This has nothing to do with Campbell Newman's Government."
Other factors
But Professor Bodman says state governments can influence unemployment numbers by cutting public sector jobs.
"Liberal governments tend to cut the public sector somewhat, which did occur when the Newman Government came to office, but the changes are evened out over time as people move from the public to the private sector," he said.
The Newman Government slashed 14,000 public service positions in their first budget in late 2012.
Dr Dipanwita Sarkar, a senior lecturer in economics at Queensland University of Technology, says it's not a black and white answer as to whether the Liberal National Party government are responsible for the unemployment rate.
She says the biggest leap in the unemployment rate occurred from December 2012 to December 2013, when the rate rose one percentage point (seasonally adjusted).
"That jump happened in the first year of the LNP government, but unemployment figures always respond with a lag," she said. "It is very hard to attribute it to what the party did right then because whatever policies the LNP government had would be indicative of at least a six month lag in terms of unemployment."
She says the "extremely resilient" Australian dollar in that first year of LNP government was the most likely factor influencing the jobless rate.
The verdict
Ms Palaszczuk's claim that Queensland's jobless rate "is the highest for 11 years... There are almost 31,000 more Queenslanders without a job since March 2012" is backed up by the ABS's official data. Ms Palaszczuk is correct.
Sources
Queensland Labor Party campaign launch, January 20, 2015
Queensland Labor employment policy "Working Queensland"
ABS Labour Force, December 2014
Media statement, Treasurer and Minister for Trade, budget 2012-13, September 11, 2012
