Australia’s unemployment rate ticked higher in November at 3.9% but hiring numbers also up

Office workers on a lunch break at Martin Place in Sydney. The number of new jobs increased, but so did the number of people looking for work in November. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Australia’s employers went on a late-year hiring binge in November, adding an extra 2,000 people per day even in a month that included a Reserve Bank interest rate rise.

The economy added 61,500 jobs last month, all but 4,500 of them full-time ones, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said. Economists had forecast the economy would swell their workforces by 11,500 jobs.