While tens of thousands of new jobs were created last month, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), more Australians are hitting the pavement in search of work — and that has led to an increase in the unemployment rate.

Sydney-based Andrew Beeston’s full-time position working for software giant Oracle was made redundant in October.

“The option was there to take a different role in the business or take a redundancy,” he told the ABC. 

“At the time, I thought the market was OK enough.”

But the jobs market had just begun to loosen, with Andrew finding himself out of work for five months.

“I had a decent payout from redundancy but when I got back from Christmas I certainly felt the impetus to get cracking,” he said.

He scored a contract elsewhere earlier this year, but that expires in September and he is again in a hurry to land more work.

This week’s official labour force figures show it could get progressively harder for people like Andrew to find work as the months tick over.

The unemployment rate edged up to 4.1 per cent in June, from 4 per cent in May, and more people are now looking for work.

“A friend of mine said during that time I was looking for work, he goes ‘whatever you think you need to do, times it by four and then do that’,” Andrew aid.

But that hard work, looking for work, may well pay off.

The ABS figures show 43,300 full-time roles were created in June, while 6,800 part-time jobs also came online.

Erin Devlin, managing director of recruiter people2people, says a candidate’s success will depend on where they’re looking for work.

“It depends on the space that you’re in,” she said.

“We’re seeing a lot of people coming out of study into the workforce and there’s also overseas migration.

“So, in some sectors, it is competitive.”

A recent Commonwealth Bank report, which referenced data from the ABS, showed huge demand for workers in healthcare and social services.

It’s perhaps hardest to land work in retail and wholesale trade.

And earlier this week, iron ore miner Fortescue Metals announced it would sack roughly 700 workers before the end of the month to cut costs.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to questions on the miner at a press conference on Thursday. 

“That’s a private sector company and there are a range of proposals,” he said. “Private companies make announcements.”

“Most of [Wednesday’s] announcement of Mr Forrest are about things happening overseas, not happening here in Australia.”

It follows a round of mass sackings at other organisations earlier this year, including Telstra.

But Ms Devlin says despite an apparent quick succession of terminations, it wasn’t necessarily a trend.

“It’s not great for the people losing their roles, obviously,” she said. 

“I don’t know that we’re necessarily seeing a big trend of redundancies across the economy at the moment.”

August cash hike feared

Economists warn, however, following 13 Reserve Bank interest rate hikes since May 2022, and economic growth at a crawl, the unemployment rate is expected to climb higher from here to 4.5 per cent.

“We’ve got the unemployment rate going up slowly, just like the RBA does,” ANZ senior economist Blair Chapman said.

“We’re expecting it to peak sometime next year.