Members commenced their discussion of the domestic economy by noting that the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.6 per cent in October, somewhat more than ½ percentage point below its peak in mid 2015. Despite a rise in full-time employment in October, all of the growth in employment over 2016 had been in part-time employment, with an increased share of people in the labour force reporting that they would like to work more hours. Members discussed various measures of labour underutilisation, including those that account for the number of hours sought by the unemployed and the additional hours desired by those who are underemployed (and who are also recorded as actively searching for additional hours). Such hours-based measures of underutilisation had declined to a similar extent as the unemployment rate since late 2015 and, unlike the heads-based measure, had not increased recently.

Wage growth had remained low and continued to be lower than implied by the historical relationship with the unemployment rate. The wage price index (WPI) had increased by a little less than expected in the September quarter and year-ended growth in the WPI had eased a little further. Although there had been some evidence from enterprise agreements that growth in construction wages had picked up recently, these agreements covered a relatively small share of the total workforce.