The Cairns Watch report published by Herron Todd White does suggest that the Cairns Region unemployment is up. This data is based on a huge region that takes in Port Douglas, the Tablelands and the Cassowary Coast, as illustrated here.
View attachment 11895
If you have a look at some of the unemployment data I have attached/linked, which has been cut in different ways, you can see a few things going on.
1. According to this graph, the trend in unemployment for the
Cairns Regional Council is actually steadily decreasing. Compare this with the Australia wide unemployment rate, which is increasing.
2. The
Small Area Labour Markets publication gives a more fine-grained picture of what is going on in this large region, with Cairns (C) unemployment rates down across the board.
If you are interested in playing with the data cut in different ways, this is a brilliant website.
http://statistics.oesr.qld.gov.au/qld-regional-profiles
I generated a number of reports from this site which I have attached below.
There is a clear difference between the Cairns North and Cairns South statistical areas in terms of unemployment, with Cairns North coming in pretty close to the State average. When you dig a little deeper, you can see the concentrated pockets of unemployment within these regions. This website is also great for looking at this:
http://atlas.id.com.au/cairns.
Jen
