Australia's June jobless rate highest in over 3 years

The unemployment rate in Australia climbed 0.1 point from 5.6 percent to 5.7 percent in June, the highest level since September 2009, the national news agency Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported on Thursday.

The unemployment rate in Victoria state rose by 0.4 points from 5.4 percent to 5.8 percent in June, which is higher than the national level, the AAP said, citing latest figures from Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) .

The data also showed that the jobless rate in Queensland increased from 5.9 percent to 6.4 percent, while Tasmania's unemployment rate rose from 7.5 percent to 8.9 percent. Also in South Australia it grew from 5.9 percent to 6 percent.

Meanwhile, in New South Wales, the seasonally adjusted jobless rate dropped from 5.5 percent to 5.4 percent and Western Australia 's rate fell from 4.9 percent to 4.6 percent.

It means that the 0.4 points rise of the jobless rate in Victoria was the third highest growth at this June's unemployment rate rank, which was only surpassed by Tasmania that got the 1.4 points increase at the rate and Queensland's 0.5 points.

The opposition to Victorian government's employment spokesman Tim Pallas told local media that the new labor force figures show Victoria has a problem and the government is in denial.

"I think what these figures show us is Victoria has taken up the lion's share of those national figures, so two-thirds of the newly-unemployed Australians live in Victoria," AAP quoted Pallas as saying.

Pallas also suggested that many of the job cuts announced recently by big enterprises like Ford and Target had contributed to the growth of unemployment figures in Victoria.

But the Victorian state government said in a media release that the growing unemployment rate increased in one month only mirrored the movement in the national unemployment rate.

According to the figures from ABS, employment in Victoria jumped by 15,000 persons last month, which was the largest monthly growth since June 2012, and the largest increase of any state in the month.

"Today's labor force figures show that Victoria is driving job creation across the country, recording the highest employment growth of all states," Victorian Acting Treasurer Gordon Rich- Phillips said.

"Compared with other States, Victoria has the third lowest unemployment rate with only resource-rich Western Australia, and New South Wales performing marginally better," Rich-Phillips said.

The nation-wide number of people employed went up by 10,300 to 11,668,500 in June while the number of people unemployed climbed by 23,700 people to 709,300 in at the same time, the ABS reported.

According to the ABS, the growth in employment was due to increased part-time employment, which went up 14,800 people to 3, 524,100. It offset the decrease of full-time employment that dropped 4,400 people to 8,144,500. The increase in total employment was mainly driven by increases in female part-time and male Part-time employment.

But the number of young people looking for full-time jobs has climbed to 27.3 percent, the highest rate in 15 years. The overall unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 19 is at 16 percent, the ABS reported.