CANBERRA: Australia’s unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent in May as the number of employed Australians grew by over 40,000, according to official data released on Thursday.

Monthly data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed that the official unemployment rate fell from 4.5 percent in April to 4.4 percent in May.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the fall in May matched economists’ expectations after a surprise jump in April pushed the unemployment rate to its highest level since 2021.

The ABS said that the total number of employed Australians increased by 40,300 to 14.73 million people in May, while the number of unemployed Australians decreased by 18,300 to 671,300 in the same period.

Sean Crick, head of labor statistics at the ABS, attributed May’s sharp rise in employment to an easing backlog of people who were waiting to start a job.

“Over the past few months, we have recorded higher proportions of unemployed people waiting to start jobs who then remained unemployed in the following month,” he said in a media release.

Despite the increase in employment, the total number of hours worked by Australians fell by 1.1 percent between April and May.

It followed a 0.9 percent increase in April, and Crick said the fall brings hours worked back in line with employment growth.

The participation rate, which measures the proportion of the working-age population who are either employed or actively looking for work, increased from 66.6 percent in April to 66.7 percent in May, half a percentage point below the record-high of 67.2 percent set in January 2025.