Even with the rise in under-employed and unemployment rates, experts predict no cut in interest rates in the near future.
The number of employed people in Australia fell by 5,500 between November and December, raising unemployment rates to 5.4 percent in December 2012, according to reports from Bureau of Statistics. Under-employed rates also rose drastically with part-time jobs rising from 8,300 to 3.4 million, most of them part-time jobs for men.
ANZ economists think that a cut in interest rates by the Reserve Bank of Australia could help in curbing the rise of unemployment in the country.
"With inflationary pressures expected to remain relatively benign ... the RBA will have scope to ease policy further to support economic activity outside of the mining sector this year," economists said in a statement.
However, experts feel that current statistics are not low enough for the RBA to start offering cuts in interest rates.
''We don't think these are the kinds of numbers that would induce a rate cut from the RBA soon,'' said CommBank senior economist Michael Workman. ''They've been indicating for six to nine months while they [were cutting] rates that these were the kinds of outcomes they were expecting on the jobs market. So we've ended up with a 3 per cent cash rate because of the expectation that this was going to happen.''
ANZ senior economist Riki Polygenis said in a statement that the RBA would need to see weaker stats in the coming weeks to take proper actions to tackle the problem of unemployment rise.
Acting Employment Minister Kate Ellis says that although there has been a huge rise in unemployment rates in Australia, it still remains lower than other countries. She also blames the public sector jobs in Queensland for a major part of the problem.
"Regrettably, more than 22,000 Queenslanders found themselves out of a job this Christmas (while) across the rest of the country, jobs grew," Ellis told reporters in Adelaide. "Were it not for the Queensland job losses, the unemployment rate today would have actually fallen to 5.2 per cent rather than slightly rising."
