Canberra, Feb 19 Australia's unemployment rate remained steady at 4.1 per cent in January, according to official data released on Thursday.
The latest monthly labour force data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed that the number of Australians employed on a full-time basis increased by 50,500 between December and January, which was partially offset by a fall in part-time employment of 32,700 people, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The official unemployment rate remained at 4.1 per cent in January after it fell from 4.3 per cent from November to December.
Economists were widely expecting the unemployment rate to rise slightly to 4.2 per cent in January, according to local media.
The ABS said that the participation rate, which measures the proportion of the working-age population who are either employed or actively looking for work, was 66.7 per cent in January compared to a record-high 67.3 per cent recorded 12 months earlier.
The total number of hours worked by Australians increased by 0.6 per cent between December and January to 2.01 billion.
On February 3, Australia's central bank raised its key interest rate for the first time in more than two years in response to a spike in inflation.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said that its Monetary Policy Board unanimously decided at its first meeting of 2026 to raise the cash rate target from 3.60 per cent to 3.85 per cent.
It marks the first increase to the cash rate target since November 2023 and comes after the central bank cut rates by 0.25 percentage points on three separate occasions in 2025.
The Monetary Policy Board said that inflation has fallen substantially since its peak in 2022, but picked up materially in the second half of 2025.
According to the latest official data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the consumer price index (CPI) rose by 3.8 per cent in the 12 months to December 2025, up from 3.4 per cent in November.
The trimmed mean, a measure of underlying inflation preferred by the RBA, rose by 3.3 per cent in the year to December, up from 3.2 per cent in the year to November.
The Monetary Policy Board said that it now considers that inflation is likely to remain above the 2-3 per cent target band "for some time."
"It is evident that private demand is growing more quickly than expected, capacity pressures are greater than previously assessed and labor market conditions are a little tight," it said.
In updated forecasts released, the RBA said it expects annual CPI growth to reach 4.2 per cent in June 2026, up from the 3.7 per cent it projected in November, before falling to 2.9 per cent in June 2027.
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