In the lead-up to Thursday’s unemployment figures, the latest fortnightly job figures show that there were almost the same number of people employed in the last week of January this year as there were a year ago. But while that is certainly better than was the case for much of last year, we should not discount just how bad 2020 was.

After the expected drop in jobs in the first couple of weeks of January, the latest release of payroll job index numbers from the bureau of statistics show a strong increase in the last half of January.

The ABS estimates that there were 5.5% more people holding a job in the last week of January than in the first. But if that sounds like an incredible surge of jobs, just remember these figures are “original” and thus they don’t account for seasonal factors (such as Christmas and new year holidays).

And the reality is that the increase in jobs in January this year was slightly less than it was last year:

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But still, at least the increase in work was there – even if it was broadly the usual that occurs every year. Given the hell workers went through last year, “the usual” is a nice change.

As it is the figures suggest that the number of people with jobs is still just 2% below the number that was employed before the pandemic hitting in March.

That is still a large number but there is hope that the gap will soon be erased given that the number of people employed at the end of January is roughly the same as the end of January 12 months ago:

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While the jobs in Victoria and Tasmania are well down on this time last year, South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory had more than 2.5% more jobs.

But the comparison with the pre-pandemic situation shows there remains a gap to be filled.

Victoria continues to be the state suffering the most but the gap between it and the rest of the nation is not so large as it was in September last year, although we will have to see what impact the latest five-day lockdown will have:

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So yes, some good news, but we must not forget that almost having the same number of people in jobs as was the case 12 months ago is not a good sign. Employment is meant to grow – not remain stagnant.

Last year was the first year since 1992 that there were fewer people employed at the end than the start:

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Because full-time employment is more subject to economic downturns than total employment (people can shift from full-time to part-time and still be employed), 2020 was the fifth year since the 1990s recession where full-time employment went backwards.

It is quite rare at any point for there to be fewer people employed than there were 12 months earlier. Since the ABS began calculating monthly employment in February 1978 it has only occurred in three periods:

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As a general rule, there are usually some 170,000 more people employed at any time than there were a year earlier. In December there were 63,900 fewer people employed.

We will find out later on Thursday if we have got back into positive territory.

If we do, it will be the quickest recovery from such falls.

In the 1982-83 recession it took 15 months, and the 1990s recession needed 34 months – nearly three years – to get to a point where there were again more people working than there had been a year before.

Right now the streak is nine months – it was deeper than ever before, but looks to be shorter because of the abnormal nature of this recession. Unlike previous recessions, this is one where lack of work is mostly linked to lack of the ability to actually be employed, given restrictions and lockdowns.

Last year was a particularly bad year for women’s employment. It is extremely rare for women’s employment to fall in a calendar year – but it did in 2020 and the 1.1% fall in full-time work for women was greater than the 0.7% fall for male full-time employment.

Before the latest January labour force figures the news looks mostly good compared with how bad things were. But the recovery of getting us back to where jobs grow at least as well as they normally do remains the challenge still to be met.