On a day that the Federal government was telling Australians that it was time to celebrate as a result of the fiscal situation achieving balance, the unemployment and underemployment rates rose. This is neoliberalism – August 2019 style. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest data today – Labour Force, Australia, August 2019 – which reveals a fairly weak labour market with where employment growth is not strong enough to absorb the increasing labour force as participation continues to creep up. As a result, unemployment rose again, albeit modestly. The disturbing trend in this rather weak environment is that underemployment rose by 0.2 points) to 8.6 per cent further and the total labour underutilisation rate (unemployment plus underemployment) rose as a consequence to 13.7 per cent. In the last two months, underemployment has risen by 0.4 points. Both the unemployment and underemployment rates are persisting around these elevated levels of wastage making a mockery of claims by commentators that Australia is close to full employment and that the fiscal position represents something desirable. The unemployment rate is 7 percentage points above what even the central bank considers to the level where inflationary pressures might be sourced from the labour market. This persistence in labour wastage indicates that the policy settings are to tight (biased to austerity) and deliberately reducing growth and income generation. My overall assessment is the current situation can best be characterised as remaining in a fairly weak state.