Jeff Borland, The University of Melbourne

The rate of unemployment in Australia is on the rise again. Official labour force data released on Thursday shows that in the month to September, Australia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate jumped from 4.3% to 4.5%.

That’s the highest rate since November 2021. The surprise jump strengthens the case for the Reserve Bank of Australia to cut the official cash rate in November.

Back in November last year, the seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment was 3.9%. It has now been above 4% for ten consecutive months, and has only been going in one direction: up.

What could this mean for interest rates?

In its recent decisions, the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy board has jumped at any signs of higher price inflation. But it has retained a favourable outlook on labour market conditions.

In its most recent September decision, the board stated:

labour market conditions have been broadly steady in recent months and remain a little tight.

Such an outlook does not seem an option in light of today’s unemployment numbers.

The Reserve Bank has a full employment mandate to achieve “the maximum level of employment consistent with low and stable inflation”.

The mandate doesn’t put a specific numerical rate on this full employment goal. However, the rate of unemployment is now well above any credible estimate of full employment.

Employment growth is slowing

The reason why the rate of unemployment is rising is not hard to spot. Employment growth is slowing.

In 2024, my calculations based on the official labour force data show an average of 32,600 extra people became employed each month, compared with an extra 33,900 looking for work.

With growth in employment and the labour force relatively balanced, the rate of unemployment remained stable.

So far in 2025, each month only an average of 12,900 extra people have moved into employment.

The number of people looking for work has responded to the weaker labour market conditions, also growing less each month than in 2024, by 22,100 on average.

But unemployment is rising because the increase in the number of people looking for work in 2025 has been much bigger than the increase in employment.

A cooling jobs market

No matter which statistic you look at, my analysis of the official labour force data reveals the signs of a weakening labour market are clear to see.

Monthly hours worked grew on average by 0.27% each month in 2024, but only 0.04% so far in 2025.

In 2024, the total stock of jobs rose by 351,600. In the first six months of 2025, it grew by just 44,100.

And the proportion of people who have jobs, but want to work more hours, has increased from 9.9% to 10.4% since the end of 2024.

Government spending

The reason employment growth is slowing is not what might have been expected – but is even more worrying.

Since about mid-2021, employment growth in Australia has been propped up by a fast pace of job creation in what is known as the non-market sector, which consists of:

• health care and social assistance
• education and training
• public administration and safety.

That growth has come about as the federal government has pushed for improvements in the quality of government services, and expanded the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and childcare services.

It has been expected for some time that eventually, the rate of increase in government spending on services would slow. That would in turn cause growth in non-market employment and total employment to slacken.

What’s really driving the trend?

However, that is not what has caused the slower employment growth in 2025.

In fact, today’s data release shows that growth in total hours worked in the non-market sector has continued at pretty much the same pace as in previous years.

Instead, the drop-off in total hours worked has been due to employment in the market sector declining.

Private employers are responding to what they see as weaker economic conditions, by reducing the rate at which they are adding new jobs.

This is a further undeniable sign of a weakening labour market.

Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Christo Atanasov Kostov, IE University

The scenes have become grimly familiar: Russian tanks rolling into Georgia in 2008, the seizure of Crimea in 2014, the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian military jets violating European airspace, and now mysterious drone sightings closing airports across Europe.

While these may seem like disconnected events, in reality they are but chapters in a singular, focused and evolving strategy. Russia’s aim is to wield military power when necessary, engage in “grey-zone” war tactics when possible, and exert political pressure everywhere. Moscow has been doing all this for decades, with one objective in mind: to redraw Europe’s security map without triggering direct war with Nato.

This goal is neither improvised nor ambiguous, and at its core, it is irredentist – it seeks to reverse Nato’s post-Cold War expansion, and reassert a Russian sphere of influence in Europe.

This singular focus was what governed Russia’s actions in the runup to its invasion of Ukraine. In December 2021, Moscow demanded that Nato bar Ukraine and Georgia from joining the alliance, and that Nato forces withdraw to their May 1997 positions, where they were before any former Soviet states in East Europe joined Nato.

This was not a diplomatic opening gambit to the February 2022 ground invasion, but an objective in and of itself. From the Kremlin’s perspective, Nato’s enlargement is both a humiliation and an existential threat, and must be curbed at all costs.

A toolkit of pressure

Russia’s actions can be variously interpreted as sabre-rattling, brinkmanship, or diplomatic pressure. In fact, all of these labels are accurate, but Russia uses them in conjunction to blur the typical lines between diplomacy, military action and domestic propaganda. We can break Moscow’s “toolkit” of pressure down into different types of action.

• Brinkmanship to force dialogue: Military escalation, from troop build-ups to the invasion of Ukraine itself, creates crises that compel Western attention. Russia manufactures emergencies to earn negotiation leverage, as it successfully did during the Cold War, and more recently in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine from 2014 onwards.
• Grey-zone probing: Drone and jet incursions over Germany, Estonia, Denmark and Norway are deliberate tests of Nato’s detection and response capacity. They also serve more the practical purpose of collecting intelligence on radar coverage and readiness without crossing into open hostilities.
• Hybrid pressure on smaller Nato allies: Cyberattacks and energy disruptions in various EU member states are designed to test the alliance’s solidarity. Moscow singles out smaller, weaker states to foster resentment and doubt within Nato.
• Domestic theatre: For Putin, confronting the West plays well at home. As Dmitry Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, recently claimed, “Europe fears its own war”. For the Kremlin, that fear reinforces the narrative that Russia is the assertive power, and that the West is indecisive.

Russia’s use of these tools is not new – it builds on strategies that have been refined since the Soviet collapse. From Transnistria to Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Donbas, Moscow sustains “unresolved” wars that lock states out of Nato and the EU, preserving Russian influence indefinitely.

Russia’s ‘permanent test’

Today, the Kremlin’s strategy increasingly favours hybrid means – drones, cyberattacks, disinformation, and energy blackmail – over warfare. These are not random provocations, but a coherent campaign of testing.

Each incursion and attack serves a diagnostic purpose: Can Europe detect? Can it coordinate a joint response? Can it enact this response swiftly and efficiently?

As Belgian officials admitted after a recent spate of drone sightings, the continent needs to “act faster” in building air-defence systems. Every such admission emboldens Moscow’s conviction that Europe is unprepared and divided.

Back home, these moments are curated into propaganda clips for state television, where pundits mock European “weakness” and frame the continent’s disarray as validation for the Kremlin’s confrontational stance. This manufactured crisis, in turn, is the latest application of a well-honed strategy.

With regard to the West, the aim is exhaustion, not conquest – a “permanent test” designed to drain resources and unity through constant, low-level pressure.

What comes next?

Russia’s escalating provocations of Nato and Europe cannot be maintained as status quo. As things stand, there are three possible scenarios for where they could lead us:

1. A new, long-term confrontation: This is the most likely outcome, as Nato cannot concede to Russia’s core demands without undermining its founding principles. Conflict would probably take the form of a drawn-out standoff: more troops on the alliance’s eastern flank, swelling defence budgets, and a new Iron Curtain across Europe.
2. The “Finlandisation” of Ukraine: One possible, though unstable, outcome could see Ukraine coerced into a neutral status – foreswearing Nato membership in exchange for guarantees as Finland did during the Cold War. From the West’s perspective, this would reward Moscow’s aggression, and entrench its veto over neighbours’ sovereignty.
3. Escalation through miscalculation: In a landscape of heightened tension, even a minor incident – a drone shootdown, a cyberattack gone wrong – could spiral into wider confrontation. A deliberate war between Nato and Russia is still improbable, but no longer unthinkable.

Europe’s imperative: resilience

The Kremlin’s approach relies on fragmentation; Europe’s answer must be cohesion. This means building up certain capabilities:

• Integrated air and missile defence: Build a truly continental shield, closing gaps that drones and hypersonic systems could exploit.
• Collective hybrid defence: Treat cyberattacks or drone incursions as alliance-wide challenges. A single, pre-agreed Nato response mechanism would deny Moscow the ability to isolate members.
• Technological and political autonomy: Invest in European defence industries, renewable energy independence, and resilient supply chains. Security now begins with self-sufficiency, especially in the face of wavering support from the US.
• Deterrence through diplomacy: Europe must combine credible military deterrence with pragmatic engagement, ensuring that channels of communication remain open to prevent escalation.

Russia’s strategy is not reactive, it is structural. The Kremlin seeks to force the West to accept a redrawn security order through a blend of coercion, probing, and perpetual testing. The tools may vary – from tanks to drones, from overt invasion to a hybrid war of attrition – but the aim endures: to undermine European unity and restore the sphere of influence lost by Russia in 1991.

Europe’s challenge is equally clear. It has to resist the fatigue of endless crisis and demonstrate that resilience, not fear, defines the continent’s future.

Moscow’s provocations will continue until the costs become prohibitive. Only a unified, prepared Europe can make that happen.

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Christo Atanasov Kostov, International Relations, Cold War, nationalism, Russian propaganda, IE University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Toby Murray, The University of Melbourne

Australians are once again being warned to tighten their online security and be extra alert to scammers, after up to 5.7 million Qantas customers’ personal details – including phone numbers and birthdays – were leaked to the dark web on Sunday.

Cyber crime supergroup Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters accessed the data back in June by convincing a Manila-based call centre operator to give the hackers access to their Salesforce system.

On Monday, federal Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke said: “You can’t simply outsource to other companies and think suddenly you’ve got no obligations on cyber security… There are very serious penalties.”

But what are those potential penalties for Qantas? And why is a corporate watchdog warning about even more serious data theft risks when Australian finance companies outsource their work overseas?

What penalties could Qantas face?

Law firm Maurice Blackburn has lodged a complaint over the Qantas data breach with Australia’s independent privacy regulator – the Office of the Information Commissioner – alleging the airline breached privacy laws by failing to adequately protect customer information.

When asked by the ABC, the commissioner’s office wouldn’t comment on whether Qantas would be fined over this latest breach.

So how much is the maximum fine for breaches like this?

Under the Privacy Act, serious or repeated privacy breaches can now incur fines of up to A$50 million or 30% of a company’s adjusted turnover during the period of the breach – whichever is greater.

This Qantas data breach is less serious than those that hit Optus and Medibank in 2022. For instance, hackers shared Medibank customers’ highly sensitive medical history data, and stole valuable identity document data, including credit card, passport and driver’s licence details. That matter is still before the courts.

While the Qantas data was still sensitive – including customers’ dates of birth, phone numbers, addresses, emails and frequent flyer numbers – it presents less of a risk for individual customers.

Besides penalties under the Privacy Act, Qantas also faces a potential class action, which affected Qantas customers can join.

Another potential outcome for Qantas could be a court-ordered payment scheme, in which individuals affected by the breach may be eventually entitled to compensation from Qantas.

We saw a similar arrangement for Facebook users affected by the Cambridge Analytica data breach a decade ago.

What are the rules for companies sharing your data overseas?

The Australian Privacy Act has specific provisions covering how companies handle your data when they send it overseas.

Importantly, when an Australian company gives your data to an offshore entity, the Australian company remains accountable for ensuring your data is kept safe.

This is why it’s important for Australian companies to consider carefully the potential risks of sending Australians’ data overseas.

These risks should be front of mind for Qantas, which in 2024 suffered a much smaller data breach due to alleged misbehaviour of overseas contractors.

However, these risks extend well beyond flagship companies such as Qantas.

Warnings over even more sensitive data

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) regulates Australian markets and financial services companies. Only days ago, it warned of “governance gaps” when financial services companies outsource work overseas – and potentially put Australians’ sensitive data at risk.

This year, ASIC has taken separate court action against Fortnum Private Wealth and FIIG Securities, alleging they failed to manage cybersecurity risks affecting thousands of customers.

In FIIG’s case, ASIC alleges a hacker was able to steal sensitive data including passport, bank account and tax file numbers. Those court cases are yet to be heard.

The finance sector – including banks, financial advisors and superannuation funds – consistently reports the third highest number of data breaches, after the health sector and government.

What we all need to do next

As individuals, we have relatively little control over how Australian companies handle our data, let alone the overseas companies they work with. But we can all do more to make ourselves more secure.

Be on scam watch: given how many Australians were exposed in the Qantas breach, be on the lookout now for scammers.

History suggests scammers target data breach victims, or people who think they may have been impacted by a data breach. If you receive a message you suspect is a scam, don’t respond – report it to Scamwatch.

Practise good “cyber hygiene”: avoid using the same password on multiple websites. Instead, use a password manager that saves your passwords across your computer and mobile phone.

That way, if your data is breached at Company A, it has less chance of impacting your security with Company B.

Companies need to step up too: Australian company executives would do well to ensure their governance, risk and compliance practices are up to scratch, especially on how they manage third-party risks.

As consumers, we entrust our cyber security to all of the companies with whom we interact. Those companies, in turn, owe it to us to ensure the drive to maximise profits doesn’t come at the cost of leaving customers worse off.

Toby Murray, Professor of Cybersecurity, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.