Today’s release of the – Labour Force data – for February 2015 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that the Australian labour market remains weak. While employment growth was modest the unemployment rate only fell by 0.1 percentage points as a result of a declining participation rate. Employment growth remains well below the underlying population growth with the result being an upward bias in the unemployment rate. The falling participation rate reflects a rising hidden unemployment rate as workers have given up looking for work. The broad ABS labour underutilisation rate – the sum of unemployment and underemployment – will now be heading towards 16 per cent (it is published in next month’s release). While the Australian Treasurer might deny that the teenage labour market is in crisis, the data tells a different story.The teenage labour market is in a parlous state and requires an urgent policy problem that the Federal government refuses to recognise or deal with. They are so obsessed with cutting fiscal deficits and shoring up the position of the Prime Minister and Treasurer that they cannot see the future damage they are causing as a result of the appalling state of the youth labour market and the weak labour market in general.