The number of unemployed job seekers in Australia is *falling* (not rising): charts

Two other important new time-series in this RBA-unearthed data-set are the total number of "short-term" and "long-term" job seekers receiving unemployment benefits in Australia. These are derived from the raw numbers by the relevant government department (DEEWR). And, in line with the story told in the previous post about declining overall numbers of dole recipients (and thus sharper declines as a share of the labour force), we see in the first chart below that the absolute number of short-term job seekers has also been declining (not rising), albeit at a reduced pace following a little blip over the New Year (presumably care of some seasonality and the east coast floods). The story is not so clear with long-term job seekers, which has flat-lined, although this would have declined as a share of the labour force. The good news is that the number of long-term unemployed has categorically not been increasing, and, if anything, has started falling again since March (again, the percentage share of long-term job seekers would have fallen)...