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Hear that? That’s the sound of the jobs market creaking, if not cracking.

Australia’s unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to a four-year high of 4.5% in September, up from 4.3% the month before.

Jim Chalmers is in Washington DC attending a G20 summit, but still found time to put out a statement reminding us that the jobless measure is “still very low by historical standards”.

That’s a fair statement. Not counting the pandemic and its aftermath, you need to go back 17 years to find a lower jobless rate.

The jump in the share market after the data release pointed to firming bets that the Reserve Bank was now odds-on to deliver a rate cut at its Melbourne Cup day meeting.

But low unemployment is a prize we must not lose, and the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics will be a major worry for the treasurer – as it will be for all Australians.

The resilient labour market is the jewel in Labor’s crown when it comes to its economic record, even overshadowing the major decline in living standards that has been a feature of the post-pandemic landscape.

Chart showing jobless rate increasing

Unemployment at 4.5% is no disaster, but it is very much not part of the plan – and it raises the fear that it could go higher still.

The RBA had expected the jobless rate to peak at 4.3% this year and stay there through 2026, which aligns with the budget forecasts.

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Two-a-half weeks ago the central bank’s monetary policy board held the cash rate as board members fretted that inflation would come in hotter-than-expected in the three months to September.

They will surely be reconsidering their options today, and Thursday’s figures mean the RBA is now favourite to act when it next meets.

The chance of a November rate cut jumped from 36% to 64% after the jobs report, according to pricing in financial markets, while the chance of a cut by December jumped from 60% to a near certainty.

There were even murmurings in the market on Thursday afternoon of a double rate cut, which is surely premature.

Rising inflation and climbing unemployment would be a headache for the central bank. Much now hinges on the September quarter consumer price report on 29 October, but it would have to be pretty bad to stay the central bank’s hand.

The key question is: was September’s labour force data a monthly blip, or the start of something worse?

The answers lie in the cross currents that have been shifting below what has been, until now at least, a largely becalmed jobs market.

Pat Bustamante, an economist at Westpac, says rapid hiring in government-backed sectors such as aged care and the NDIS helped drive the post-Covid employment boom, despite underwhelming economic growth. That impulse has since faded, and the dynamic has reversed: employment growth has slowed even as the economy has picked up.

Which means much depends on whether the private sector, which tends not to be as labour-intensive, can maintain enough hiring momentum to keep unemployment low – something RBA board members also discussed at their recent meeting.

If it can’t, then Bustamante calculates that the unemployment rate could reach as high as 4.8% early next year, which is perilously close to losing all the post-pandemic labour market gains.

That’s not something the central bank, or the government, would want to risk.

Paris, October 15th, 2025 – Broadcom Inc. today announced that the Caisse Nationale des Allocations Familiales (CNAF), a cornerstone of France’s public service, has selected VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to accelerate its digital transformation. CNAF’s new private cloud built on VCF will enable the institution to combine enhanced security, data sovereignty, and operational agility—critical priorities as the modernization of public services becomes a national imperative.

A System Under Regulatory and Security Constraints

Each year, CNAF manages millions of transactions while adhering to strict regulatory requirements, which demand extremely tight production timelines. Simultaneously, its cybersecurity teams face near-daily attack attempts, necessitating maximum resilience and responsiveness.

By delivering a single unified platform, VCF offers a holistic view of private cloud operations, improving productivity and delivering faster insights to enable more rapid incident response and better performance optimization, which is essential for the smooth operation of Caisses d’Allocations Familiales (CAF) across France.

Security and Sovereignty at the Core of the Strategy

With VCF, CNAF benefits from critical features such as live patching, Zero Trust micro-segmentation, and automated workload monitoring. These capabilities strengthen the protection of beneficiaries’ data while reducing the time required to deploy new applications.

“Security and sovereignty of our data are non-negotiable. With VCF, we help ensure that sensitive information remains within our data centers while leveraging trusted European clouds,” emphasizes Nicolas Poulain, Director of Operations & Technical Engineering at CNAF.

This approach aligns with France’s national strategy to bolster the resilience of public infrastructure, a key priority as digital sovereignty becomes a strategic focus.

Empowering Public Sector Innovation

“CNAF’s transformation exemplifies VMware solutions’ mission: enabling the public sector to combine innovation, security, and performance to meet the growing expectations of citizens. With VMware Cloud Foundation, we help organizations take the next step by building a trusted cloud foundation capable of supporting both today’s services and tomorrow’s emerging needs,” explains Marc Dollois, General Manager, France, Broadcom Software.

Innovation Serving Millions of Beneficiaries

Beyond technical gains, the platform’s modernization has a clear goal: improving the experience for beneficiaries. CNAF is working to automate benefit allocation, ensuring that eligible individuals receive their entitlements directly, without complex administrative procedures. This simplification will help reduce fraud, increase fairness, and make it easier for those with legitimate rights to access their allocations.

“Our mission is to provide a reliable, stable, and high-performing IT system, because behind every online process and payment are millions of families who depend on us,” notes Nicolas Poulain.

Committing to a More Efficient and Accessible Future

By adopting VCF, CNAF is also positioning itself to explore new use cases—such as artificial intelligence through VMware Private AI, or modern application orchestration with vSphere Kubernetes Services (VKS), delivering greater agility, resilience, and compliance for cloud-native applications.

The objective: to pave the way for a more proactive and automated public service, capable of anticipating needs and delivering allocations transparently and swiftly. The combination of a modernized infrastructure, enhanced security, and integrated AI capabilities places CNAF at the forefront of digital transformation in France’s public sector.