HLFS out

The latest Household Labour Force Survey has been released, and it shows that the economy is still banging along, despite the Reserve Bank's best efforts to strangle it. Employment, hours worked, and the labour force participation rate continued to grow, with record levels in all. On the down side, there was a slight uptick in unemployment, but not one we should be overly concerned about yet.

Predictably, the government is crowing about these results, and they have at least some reason to. People generally want to work, and increasing employment is one of the most basic solutions to social problems (at least, if the jobs are good - and interestingly, the growth this quarter has all been in full-time rather than part-time jobs), so high employment is something they'd welcome. And OTOH, as I've said before, from a preference-satisfaction viewpoint a high labour force participation rate isn't necessarily good news, in that it may represent people working who would really rather be doing something else. The goal of government in the labour market shouldn't be to kick people into work they don't want, but rather to ensure that everybody who wants a job can get one.

This is a particular concern with the government's long-term "economic transformation" agenda. According to Jordan Carter, this involves trying to raise labour force participation to "a Scandinavian rate of close to 80%". But people are far more than just work-units to be driven to the employment market to produce higher economic statistics for governments to gloat over; they have lives and other preferences as well, which will be significantly impacted by this goal. Shouldn't we at least be being asked first...?