South Australia has emerged on top of a national ranking of states' coronavirus responses in terms of jobs, with Queensland deemed the "biggest loser" of the pandemic so far.
The result comes as New South Wales — which, like SA, has been praised for its work in managing joblessness — records 112 new COVID-19 cases, at least 34 of whom were infectious while in the community.
SA's handling of the pandemic's impact on employment was rated better "than any other state" by market analysts, after it recorded the biggest drop in combined unemployment and underemployment — 6.5 per cent — since the last quarter prior to the pandemic.
The research by market analysis firm Roy Morgan listed the state's unemployment and underemployment figure for the most recent June quarter at 17.4 per cent — down from 23.9 per cent in December 2019.
Meanwhile, Queensland recorded a 6.6 per cent increase on the same metric, which was "clearly higher than any other state".
"The tourism industry in Queensland has been hard hit by the continuing closure of international borders.
"The snap border closures, whenever there has been a domestic outbreak of COVID-19, [have] added tremendous uncertainty to any domestic holiday bookings for people from Sydney and Melbourne."
According to the quarterly snapshot, SA has had fewer days in lockdown of any state, and is the only mainland state not to have gone into lockdown this year.
"The lesser reliance of South Australia on international tourism than other mainland states has also served the local economy well during a time when international borders have remained closed."
The driver of the result was a reduction not in unemployment, which the figures show marginally increased, but in underemployment, which dropped from 13.7 to 7.1 per cent.
While South Australia may have had the most comparative success in reducing joblessness, Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia all outperformed the state in overall terms.
"Despite spending more time in lockdown than the other states the lowest unemployment and underemployment is again to be found in the two largest states of New South Wales and Victoria," the research stated.
"New South Wales had the lowest unemployment and underemployment of any state at 16.5 per cent of the workforce in the June quarter."
Victoria was second, at 17.1 per cent, and WA third, at 17.3 per cent.
Tasmania (21.4 per cent) was ahead of Queensland (23.5 per cent), with the national figure sitting at 18.4 per cent.
SA Treasurer Rob Lucas said the state's strong showing was a "huge tick in the box" for the way South Australians had responded to the changing public health advice.
"We've still got challenges in terms of employment and unemployment in South Australia," he said.
"[But] if you measure where we are now to where we were before COVID, South Australia's improvement on that particular measure has been the best of all the states.
"We've listened to the public health advice, we've followed all the warnings — the challenge for us is that we've got to continue to do it because we don't want to end up as we're seeing in NSW at the moment with the significant challenges that they face."
