Today’s release of the – Labour Force data – for August 2014 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed an extraordinary rise in part-time employment and a decline in unemployment. The results are suspicious as the ABS themselves acknowledge. Despite the massive increase in part-time employment, total working hours barely rose and the upshot was the underemployment jumped sharply. There are now more than 1 million workers in Australia who are underemployment. The broad labour underutilisation rate jumped from 13.5 to 14.6 per cent. Teenagers gained some of the part-time employment growth but full-time employment slumped further. The Government will be claiming the employment reversal is a vindication of their economic policy – but we will have to see if the sudden jump is sustained or is a statistical artifact.