Pressing towards full employment? The persistence of underemployment in Australia

The economic boom in Australia since the early 1990s has been accompanied by a steady increase in jobs and a reduction in official unemployment rates. This has sparked some excited commentary. Responding to the release by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) of the July 2007 labour force estimates, which cited an unemployment rate of 4.3 percent, the then-federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, announced that we are pressing towards full employment (The Australian, 9 August 2007). He was loyally echoed a week later by the Secretary of the Treasury, who pointed to the same figure and declared that today the Australian economy is as close to full employment as it has been for more than 30 years (The Australian, 16 August 2007).