Australia Labour Force: 2026 Schedule, Dates and What to Expect

The Australia Labour Force release is the country’s monthly jobs report, published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It contains the unemployment rate, the change in employment, the participation rate and hours worked, and it is the single most important gauge of how the Australian labour market is holding up. The next release is scheduled for Thursday September 24, 2026 at 11:30am AEST, which is 9:30pm ET on September 23 in New York and 2:30am on September 24 in London. Every date on this page is taken from the ABS release calendar, and the ICS and Google Calendar feeds on this page let you subscribe so each release lands in your own diary with the correct local time. Full schedule and background: Australia jobs report dates.

2026 and 2027 schedule

The table below lists every Australia Labour Force release date confirmed by the ABS, in local Australian eastern time. Dates shown as AEST are standard time; AEDT is daylight saving time, which shifts the New York and London equivalents by an hour. Releases usually fall on a Thursday.

Source: ABS release calendar, future releases.

What is the Australia Labour Force release?

Labour Force, Australia is a monthly statistical publication built on the ABS Labour Force Survey, a rotating sample of Australian households. Each month the ABS asks people whether they worked in the reference fortnight, how many hours they worked, and if they were not working, whether they were actively looking for a job and available to start. From those answers it estimates how many people are employed, how many are unemployed, and how large the labour force is.

The headline numbers are the unemployment rate, which is the share of the labour force without work but actively looking for it, and the monthly change in employment, split between full-time and part-time roles. Two other measures matter almost as much. The participation rate is the share of the working-age population either working or looking for work, and it explains why the unemployment rate can rise even in a month when employment grows: if more people start looking for work, the labour force expands. Monthly hours worked capture whether existing staff are being asked to do more or less, which often turns before headcount does.

The release also covers underemployment, meaning people who have a job but want and are available for more hours, and underutilisation, which combines unemployment and underemployment. Those measures are useful in Australia because part-time work is a large share of total employment, so a falling unemployment rate can coexist with a lot of unwanted spare capacity.

The report matters far beyond Australia because it is one of the first major labour market readings each month from a developed, commodity-exporting economy, and because the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has a dual focus on inflation and full employment. Traders in London and New York watch it partly for the Australian dollar and partly as an early read on how demand in the Asia-Pacific region is holding up.

How is it calculated or decided?

The estimates come from a household survey, not from payroll or tax records, which is the main difference from the way some other countries build their jobs data. About one-eighth of the sample is replaced each month, so respondents stay in the survey for eight months. That rotation makes month-to-month changes more reliable than a fresh sample would, but it also means the numbers carry sampling error: a reported monthly employment change of 10,000 or 20,000 can be smaller than the statistical margin around it.

The ABS publishes three versions of most series. Original data are the raw estimates. Seasonally adjusted data strip out the regular calendar pattern, such as retail hiring before Christmas or the January lull, and this is the version quoted in headlines. Trend data smooth the series further and are the best guide to direction, though the ABS has at times suspended or reviewed trend estimates when the underlying pattern is disrupted.

Revisions are usually modest and come from seasonal reanalysis and population benchmarking rather than from large restatements of raw responses. The ABS also periodically corrects errors: in 2026 it identified a systems error affecting published underemployment and underutilisation figures for April, and it stated that the core measures of employment, the unemployment rate, the participation rate and hours worked were not affected.

One structural change is under way. The ABS is running a Labour Force Modernisation programme and published an update alongside the July 2026 release, setting out how users can access a new suite of Labour Force statistics from the September data release onwards. If you build spreadsheets or models on these series, check the ABS notes on the day rather than assuming table numbers and file names are unchanged.

What time is it released and where?

Labour Force, Australia is published at 11:30am Australian eastern time on the scheduled day. For the September 24, 2026 release that is 11:30am AEST in Sydney and Melbourne, which equals 9:30pm ET on September 23 in New York and 2:30am on September 24 in London. Brisbane runs on the same clock as Sydney during standard time; Perth is 9:30am AWST and Adelaide 11:00am ACST. From October 2026 onwards several dates in the table are listed as AEDT, when Sydney moves to daylight saving, so the London and New York equivalents shift one hour earlier.

The data appear on the ABS website at the Labour Force, Australia latest release page, alongside a media release summarising the headline moves and downloadable time series spreadsheets. There is no advance lock-up for the general public, and no figures are released early, so the whole market sees the numbers at the same instant. That is why Australian dollar quotes can move within the first second.

Australian markets are open when the data land, so the ASX 200, Australian government bond futures and the currency all react immediately. European and North American traders are usually asleep, which means the initial move happens in relatively thin liquidity and can be sharper than the eventual settled move.

Recent readings

The table shows recent seasonally adjusted outcomes as published by the ABS. Employment changes are the monthly seasonally adjusted movements quoted in the ABS media releases.

Source: ABS media releases and the Labour Force, Australia publication. In July 2026 total employment stood at 14,807,200 people, the number of unemployed people was 691,500 and the participation rate was 66.9%. Longer runs of data, back to 1978 for the headline series, are available in the ABS time series spreadsheets attached to each release.

How do markets react?

The Australian dollar is the most sensitive asset. A stronger report, meaning solid employment growth and a steady or lower unemployment rate, tends to lift the currency because it makes near-term interest rate cuts less likely and can bring rate rises into view. A weaker report tends to push the Australian dollar down and Australian government bond prices up, because lower policy rates are then seen as more probable. Moves of 0.3% to 0.8% in the Australian dollar within minutes are common when the unemployment rate surprises by a tenth of a percentage point.

Rate expectations are the transmission channel. The RBA held its cash rate target at 4.35% on August 11, 2026, and its Monetary Policy Board weighs labour market slack against inflation that has been running above the 2% to 3% target band. Because the RBA meets less frequently than it publishes its forecasts, the jobs report is often the main new piece of information between meetings, and traders reprice the bank bill and swap curve accordingly.

Equities react in a more mixed way. Banks and consumer-facing shares can rise on evidence of a resilient labour market, because employment supports loan repayments and spending, yet a very strong report can weigh on the whole index if it implies higher rates for longer. Miners often respond more to Chinese demand and commodity prices than to domestic jobs numbers.

Traders should treat the detail as important as the headline. A drop in the unemployment rate driven by people leaving the labour force is weaker than the same drop driven by hiring. Likewise a large employment gain concentrated in part-time work, as in June 2026 when part-time roles accounted for 47,000 of a 76,000 rise, says less about labour demand than an equivalent full-time gain. Because the survey has sampling error, seasoned analysts look at the three-month average and at hours worked rather than one month in isolation.

What It Means for Your Money

If you have a mortgage in Australia, this report is one of the inputs the RBA uses when setting the cash rate, and the cash rate feeds almost directly into variable mortgage rates. A run of weak jobs data raises the chance of rate cuts and therefore lower monthly repayments in time; a run of strong data, especially alongside high inflation, keeps repayments where they are or pushes them higher. On a 500,000 dollar loan, a 25 basis point change (a basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point, so 25bp is 0.25%) alters repayments by roughly 75 to 80 dollars a month.

Savers see the mirror image. Term deposit and savings account rates track expectations for the cash rate, so a labour market that stays tight tends to keep deposit rates attractive for longer, while clear evidence of a downturn usually leads banks to trim advertised rates before the RBA moves.

If you are looking for work or asking for a pay rise, the composition matters more than the headline. Rising underemployment and falling hours worked signal that employers are cutting shifts rather than staff, which historically comes before slower wage growth. Falling unemployment with strong full-time hiring gives employees more bargaining power.

For pensions and investment portfolios, the effect runs through Australian shares, bonds and the currency. Superannuation funds and international investors holding Australian assets see valuations shift with rate expectations. If you hold Australian shares or funds from the UK or Europe, your return in pounds or euros depends on the Australian dollar as well as the share price, so a jobs report that moves the currency changes your return even if the index does not budge. Households planning travel or sending money to or from Australia will notice the same effect in the exchange rate they are quoted, sometimes within hours of the release.

Prices are the slower channel. A labour market that stays tight supports wage growth and service sector inflation, which is why the RBA watches employment when judging how long inflation will take to return to target. That eventually shows up in the cost of everyday goods and services, and in how quickly interest rates can come down.

Related economic events

• US Jobs Report: the monthly non-farm payrolls and unemployment release, the global benchmark for labour market data.
• US CPI Report: US consumer price inflation, the single biggest driver of global rate expectations.
• US GDP Report: quarterly growth figures that set the tone for global risk appetite and commodity demand.
• US PCE Report: the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, watched closely for the path of US rates.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the next Australia Labour Force release?

The next release is scheduled for Thursday September 24, 2026 at 11:30am AEST, which is 9:30pm ET on September 23 and 2:30am on September 24 in London. The following release is set for October 15, 2026.

What time is the Australian jobs report published?

Always 11:30am Australian eastern time on the scheduled day, so 11:30am AEST during standard time and 11:30am AEDT during daylight saving. There is no early access, and all figures become public at the same moment.

How often is it released?

Monthly, usually on a Thursday, with each release covering the previous survey reference fortnight. The ABS publishes the full forward calendar of dates in advance.

Where can I find the official release?

On the ABS website under Labour Force, Australia, where the media release, the main features commentary and the downloadable time series spreadsheets are published together. Forward dates are listed on the ABS future releases calendar.

How does the jobs report affect interest rates?

The RBA weighs labour market conditions against inflation when setting the cash rate target, which stood at 4.35% after the August 11, 2026 decision. Persistently weaker employment and a rising unemployment rate increase the chance of cuts, while a tight labour market alongside above-target inflation argues for keeping rates higher for longer.