Most notably, the headline jobless rate is down to 3.5 per cent, the lowest in almost 50 years. Of course, many remain suspicious of that rate as a true measure of joblessness, including, as it does, people gainfully occupied with just one hour of work a week.

But such observers should take heart that measures of labour “underutilisation” are falling too. Australia’s official underutilisation rate, which combines both the unemployed and the underemployed – people who would like more hours and are available to work them – has fallen below 10 per cent to its lowest since 1982.

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Hours worked are also improving. Average hours worked are back to pre-pandemic levels, despite a higher-than-usual number of workers not working due to illness.

The number of people in full-time work is 7 per cent higher than immediately before COVID, while part-time employment is 0.6 per cent lower.

Long-term joblessness is also easing, helped in no small part by the taxpayer support unleashed by the Morrison government during the pandemic, which achieved its goal of avoiding the massive “scarring effect” of rising long-term joblessness.

All this is being achieved at a time when the highest proportion of Australians in more than a century is looking for work. Australia’s participation rate – the proportion of the working-age population either in or looking for work – has struck a record high above 66.8 per cent. Youth labour force participation is particularly strong, thanks to the higher job vacancies in lower-skilled jobs such as food services and accommodation, created by the absence of foreign students and backpackers.

In short: more Australians than ever are looking for work and an increasing proportion are having no trouble finding it.

Of course, things may change, and rising joblessness may indeed be the byproduct of the Reserve Bank’s aggressive campaign to normalise interest rates and bring inflation to heel.

Amid all this good news on the jobs front, next month’s Jobs and Skills Summit is looking very much like a solution in search of a problem.

Boosting wages growth and securing more Australian jobs were key pledges in Labor’s election campaign, which also included a host of policy responses, such as a $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund to support domestic industries. I would particularly like to see Treasury run a rigorous eye over this in its upcoming white paper to ensure the cost per job for taxpayers is acceptable.

We can always do better. But now is no time to go retrofitting a jobs or skills disaster to fit pre-election rhetoric.

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The truth is Australia’s jobs market is remarkably strong and is delivering unprecedented job security perhaps not to all, but to most Australians including some of our most vulnerable.

If it’s a summit we’re having, let it be as much an opportunity for celebration – including of how the previous government handled the pandemic – as it is for excessive hand-wringing.

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