Unemployment is shaping up as a key issue in the Queensland election campaign. The State Opposition is keen to portray Labor as a party of economic wreckers "costing Queenslanders jobs and opportunity".
The LNP's claim is misleading. Although Queensland employment did indeed fall by about 30,000 in 2016 — the biggest fall for any calendar year since the current employment series started in 1978 — the LNP has ignored the surge in jobs over the past ten months, which has offset the 2016 loss more than three times over. The most recent figures also show Queensland now has the strongest annual employment growth in the nation, although as one expert pointed out, after a year of relative weakness in 2016, the state's job market has been coming off a lower base. While the unemployment rate in Queensland, at 5.9 per cent, has been slowly trending down, it remains above the national average, and only slightly below Tasmania, which has the highest unemployment. Like some other states, the unemployment rate has been higher than it otherwise might have been because of an increase in the number of people actively looking for work. And, as a second expert noted, five out of six states are grouped in a relatively narrow band of unemployment, meaning Queensland's unemployment ranking could quickly change. Furthermore, as two experts noted, state government policy is only one of several factors that influence the jobs market. Others include federal politics, international economic conditions, exchange rates and interest rates. Given these dynamics, to suggest that a state government is solely responsible for the performance of the labour market is a stretch.
Fact check: Did Queensland see its largest fall in jobs on record last year?
['Queensland', 'Australian_Labor_Party']