The country added 59,000 full-time jobs in the month, the seasonally adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed, but part-time employment dropped by 29,800.Underemployment – which measures those working fewer hours than they would like – dropped sharply from 8.5 per cent to 8.1 per cent.The number of employed Australians was 12,939,900 in January – still below the nearly 13m in March prior to the pandemic.The official jobless rate peaked at 7.5 per cent in July, although the figure would have been almost twice as high were it not for JobKeeper, which kept employees attached to employers even if they had no work.The Reserve Bank has predicted the post-COVID-19 trend of falling unemployment could stall and even briefly reverse come April after the end of JobKeeper, but that it will drop to 6 per cent by the end of this year.The unemployment figures come as the big banks reported 91 per cent of loans granted payment deferrals at the height of the pandemic have now resumed repayments. The Australian Banking Association said 5 per cent of deferred business loans and 13 per cent of deferred housing loans are yet to resume repayments.From the four major banks, 78,556 loans remain deferred, the ABA said – of which, 60,562 are housing loans, 11,263 are business loans, and the remainder a mix of personal loans and credit cards.



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