That's if the Australian Bureau of Statistics asks us to believe the figures, which it more-or-less does. It says not only were 58,600 more Australians funneled into jobs in October, but that almost half of them (26,100) found jobs in Victoria. It's tough to believe that there was more than one person hired per minute in October. Credit:Rob Young "This was a strong, but not unprecedented movement," it says in its labour market commentary. There have been twelve larger movements over the past four decades, one of them in December 2014. But that doesn't mean it happened. Every month the Bureau surveys around 26,000 households and asks who in them worked in the past two weeks and who did not. It surveys the same households month after month for eight months, then on the ninth month it abandons one eighth of its survey and replaces it with a new eighth, chosen at random. The new eighth stays in for eight months, and so on.

The idea is to get both continuity and change, so that it is not always surveying the same 26,000 households. Every so often there's something unusual about the one-eighth that is ejected from the survey (such as being highly unemployed) or something unusual about the one-eighth that is brought in (such as being highly employed). Or something unusual about both. When that happens the employment total can jump (or dive) even if the employment experience of those who remained in the survey didn't change, or didn't change much. That seems to be what happened in October. Yes, there was something of a "Turnbull Effect", or perhaps it was a "Daniel Andrews Effect" given that the jump in employment was concentrated in Victoria. But it wasn't as big as is claimed. It is possible to work this out by examining what the Bureau calls the "gross flows". These are the movements into and out of employment between the October and November surveys among only those households who were in both surveys. The gross flows leave out both the households that left the survey in October and the households that joined in November.

The gross flows show a genuine jump in employment in October, but one only half as big as the one published. Around half of that figure of 58,600 newly-employed workers appears to have been a statistical artifact, caused by a difference in the type of households that left the survey and the type that joined. But that still means half of the jump was probably genuine. Treasurer Scott Morrison was unwise to treat the 58,600 figure as if it meant something. "I congratulate the businesses that employed the 58,600 people who got jobs in October and the people who took on those jobs," he told a Canberra press conference. "The government's plan, our platform, is all about securing stronger growth and more jobs in our economy and to see those results is particularly pleasing."

His predecessors were cautious about placing too much weight on one month's figure. Victorian Labor MP Lily D'Ambrosio threw caution to the wind at about the same time as Morrison, tweeting "Labor Gets It Done", heralding what she said were "26,100 new jobs created" and a fall in Victoria's unemployment rate from 6.3 to 5.6 per cent. Next time employment dives, and it's largely a statistical artifact, politicians like D'Ambrosio and Morrison will find it hard to convince us of that truth, which is that we shouldn't take these kind of moves too seriously. In recent months the figures have been particularly difficult to take seriously.

"The results of the last six months aren't worth the paper they're written on," a former head of the ABS Bill McLennan told The Australian Financial Review last month. The Bureau has been switching to online surveys and changing the order in which it asks questions. It's so-called "trend" measure gives a more believable account of what's going on, but even it is heavily influenced by sudden changes in the makeup of the survey of the kind we seem to have had in October. The trend shows employment climbing by a healthy 18,800 and the unemployment rate steady at 6.1 per cent. It shows NSW gained 9200 jobs, Queensland 4400, Victoria 3200, and Western Australia 1300. It shows employment in South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern and Australian Capital Territories broadly steady.

Peter Martin is economics editor of The Age. Follow Peter Martin on Facebook