Jobs hit all-time high

So this is what the RBA had early knowledge of: employment in Australia is running at an all-time high.

The headline-grabbing unemployment rate fall to 5.7 per cent only tells part of the very strong story. It's the nature of the news cycle to focus on the unemployment percentage rather than the employment numbers, but the real strength of the economy right now - the higher-interest-rate-inducing strength - is that more Australians have a job than ever before.

Leave aside the twists and turns of seasonally-adjusted and trend series statistics for a moment and just consider the ''original'' numbers: there were 10,885,200 people with jobs last month. The previous record high was exactly a year ago at 10,875,300.

Yes, the number of full-time jobs is still down from the peak by 151,600 to 7,687,100 in original terms, but there are 161,500 more part-time jobs.

The measure of total work - aggregate hours - picked up last month and is just 2.3 per cent below the boom-time peak reached in July 2008. And if the trend series trend holds, so to speak, that peak will soon be recaptured too.

Translating those hours worked into money-earned and therefore capable of being spent, disposable income in considerably higher now than it was at the peak - a message that has finally filtered through to business. There are more potential domestic customers than ever before, they have money in their pockets and rising consumer and employment confidence means they are increasingly susceptible to being enticed to spend it. Time to revive the marketing and advertising departments.

With the Australian Bureau of Statistics survey not back up to full-speed until December, it's dangerous to read too much into the last few thousand places of the monthly numbers, but the overall anecdotal message of employment growth, including growth in full-time jobs, is now being backed up by the stats.

That makes a 25-point rate rise on Melbourne Cup day a sure thing and a similar set of numbers for the October labor force will mean another 25 points at the RBA's December meeting. The only reason January won't see another increase is that the RBA board takes that month off.

I have a personal but very lonely preference for the trend series numbers. That hugely-ignored measure has unemployment steady at 5.8 per cent compared with the seasonally-adjusted 5.7 per cent figure. By either measure though, Australia's employment story during the global financial crisis is astounding. While unemployment is still rising sharply in most of the developed world, we're recording unemployment well below our 30-year average of 7.2 per cent and seeing growth in jobs to a record level.