% of labour force - Source frequency: monthly · Methodology · Corrections
Australia's unemployment rate was 4.5% as of April 2026, and the trend is broadly stable. The percentage of people who are actively looking for work but cannot find it. High unemployment means people are unable to support themselves and their families. It reduces consumer spending and government revenue. Data is sourced from ABS Labour Force Survey (Cat. 6202.0) and updated monthly.
Ranked by latest value (lower is better)
| Rank | State | Value | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Western AustraliaWA | 4.1% of labour force | |
| 2 | South AustraliaSA | 4.2% of labour force | |
| 3 | QueenslandQLD | 4.2% of labour force | |
| 4 | Australian Capital TerritoryACT | 4.2% of labour force | |
| 5 | Northern TerritoryNT | 4.4% of labour force | |
| 6 | New South WalesNSW | 4.5% of labour force | |
| 7 | VictoriaVIC | 4.8% of labour force | |
| 8 | TasmaniaTAS | 5% of labour force | 12mo |
The percentage of people who are actively looking for work but cannot find it.
High unemployment means people are unable to support themselves and their families. It reduces consumer spending and government revenue.
GREEN = favourable trend within acceptable band of baseline. AMBER = flat or mild change. RED = unfavourable trend beyond threshold.
This data is sourced programmatically from official statistical APIs and data feeds (ABS Labour Force Survey (Cat. 6202.0)), updated monthly. The source link above points to the human-readable publication page, which presents the same underlying data in a different format (e.g. Excel workbook, PDF release). Our pipeline fetches the machine-readable version automatically and converts it to the standardised format shown here.
See all sources and methodology on the data sources page.
