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So two weeks ago a bloke write a post for The Drum in which he stated:

“But most certain of all is that the men's tournament will be won by one of the top-seeded players.”

Now in my defence I did mean one of the top 10, but yeah, Stan Wawrinka coming through, and being the first player to beat both Djokovic and Nadal in the one grand slam (Federer has a couple times beaten Djokovic and Murray to win, but not Nadal and one of the other) was not really on the cards.

Even prior to the final it didn’t look that likely. Nadal thrashed Federer who had thrashed Murray (really the last part of the 3rd set was a flub) and Tsonga. He looked to be peaking at the perfect time.

It was time to invite Pete Sampras down to hand out the trophy to Nadal for winning his 14th title (and thus equal with Sampras). It’s a tough game, men’s tennis. Best of 5. Can go for easily over three hours. Anything can happen. But c’mon. Put down your glasses.

No one told Wawrinka however, who came out and pushed Nadal around all the way through the first set. He won it easy, deservedly, and confidently.

But we’re talking Nadal here, El toro. The strongest mental player in the game. The come back is possible even probable.

Winning a grand slam though is both a mental and physical test and the body needs to be able to last the 7 matches. And it can go at any moment. A slip, and lunge, a twinge.

And Nadal’s body, which conversely seems built of steel and at times as fragile as rusted iron, was unkind.

His back twigged. A spasm? A muscle pull?

Who knows. But he was off for an injury break after being broken at the start of the 2nd set.

The crowd booed. Spurred on perhaps by Wawrinka taking a bit of issue with the time out, because certainly it was the precise moment if you were going to indulge in some gamesmanship to call for the trainer.

The crowd was perhaps chastened by memories of Azarenka going off in last year women’s final, perhaps as well by Nadal’s rather oddly timed injury time-out in his semi-final against Federer, and who knows, perhaps even recalling Tomic’s quick default in the first round against Nadal.

And you can say they were unsportsmanlike. But tennis has become victim to players using timeouts at opportune times. The crowds know it, and can sense it especially when the other player seems to be thinking it as well.

It was clear though, as soon as the play restarted, that Nadal was injured. And the crowd, perhaps chastened by their own reaction, cheered for Nadal for most of the rest of the match.

Nadal gave Wawrinka the 2nd set with barely a yelp.

But there was no way Nadal was going to quit. You don’t quit in the final of a grand slam. Justine Henin did it in the 2006 women’s final in Melbourne and it rather hung over her. It seemed disrespectful to Mauresmo.

Grand slam finals tennis etiquette  requires even when you are injured to stay out there and get beaten.

And there was no way Nadal was going to quit because backs are funny things… drugs can dull the pain… swinging for winners at every opportunity can suddenly start being a good strategy – especially if you opponent is not quite sure what to do – kill you off, or take pity, or go through the emotions like Wawrinka sort of only needed to do in the second set?

And so it was with Wawrinka. He gifted Nadal a break at the start of the third set. He played like he assumed Nadal was unable to walk, and then when Nadal began to run he played like someone who felt he had been cheated. 

For a set he was angry and confused with the world.

The Nadal of the second set was gone, replaced by a bloke playing like there was no tomorrow, because there is none. You don’t win 13 grand slams by leaving anything on the court.

And Wawrinka was a wreck. He had thoroughly outplayed Nadal in the first set, and suddenly was acting like the match had been stolen, instead of him playing like he was up 2 sets to love.

He tried to shorten points despite it being Nadal who wanted each rally to finish as soon as possible. He forgot to make Nadal run. He lost timing, lost game play, lost his head.

The second set was lost by Nadal’s back; the third lost by Wawrinka’s head.

The fourth set though seemed to bring normality back to the court. Nadal was running around, but clearly not able to return with the power needed to trouble Wawrinka’s serve. Nadal was down break points in his first serving game, was at 30-30 in his second.

Wawrinka’s serve seemed solid and it looked only a matter of time before Wawrinka realised the match was there for him to take.

And take is he did, when he broke Nadal easily to go up 4-2.

Start the engraving.

And then he was broken to love.

A truly horrible game. No first serves in, a seriously choked forehand to lose the game.

And so everyone started to wonder if this is going to be the biggest choke of all time. Because, while Nadal deserves the credit for sticking it out, it was clearly on Wawrinka’s racquet and he was literally giving the games to Nadal. Balls hit long, shanked forehands, tight first serves, dumb tennis. It was some of the most awful tennis to watch.

I don’t think there was anyone watching or playing the match who thought if it went to 5 sets that Wawrinka would win. He had to win the 4th. To lose it would have been the most gut searing experience that could have been only worsened by the thought that losing 3 sets in such circumstance is worse than 2, and that he was very likely going to do just that.

Thankfully – because it would have been seriously godly horrific to watch – he again broke Nadal straight away to go up 5-3.

This time he served it out like a man knowing it was his time.

The tournament of the body and mind was won by the man who was able to keep hold of both – even if the mind looked gone for a set and a half.

Anyone who thinks this victory is diminished has no idea how sport works. It’s survival of the fittest. There is many a sportsman or woman going around who would’ve had a great career were it not for injuries.

The body needs to hold up in order for you to hold up the trophy. That’s why you do the training, that’s why you have the insane fitness regimes.

Was Nadal unlucky? Yes. But no less than he was lucky Tomic was injured allowing Nadal to cruise through what was expected to be a tough first round. Pete Sampras was getting easily beaten by Mark Philippoussis in the quarter finals of the 1999 Wimbledon Championships when Philippoussis tore the cartilage in his left knee. There’s no asterisk by Sampras’s name on that trophy, and there’s none next to Wawrinka’s for this one.

The body and the mind both have to hold up.

And so is there a changing of the guard? Not really, but yes. Wawrinka is 28 years old. He is never going to be the big thing in tennis (nor even the next big thing). He is not the new generation – he’s older than Nadal, Djokovic and Murray. But it is a changing of the guard because it should let every other player in the top 10 know that it can be done.

Surely Juan Martin del Potro will one day remember he is good enough to win these titles. Tsonga, Simon, Monfils and others should know you don’t need to win a title by the time you’re 25 or you’re done.

But also the tournament showed us glimmers of the future. Grigor Dimitrov has arrived, and he looks set to stick around. At just 22 he is the first of the next generation of players who have had to realise that the old days of breaking through when you’re 19 or 20 are gone.

The men’s game is now a game for men. He beat Canadian Milos Raonic, and he at number 11 in the world is likely to be the next one to break into the top 10. If both he and Dimitrov can do it this year, then a changing of the guard will be more in doing than in the talking.

For Tomic? Well he had a bad one. Injured and also well beaten in Sydney by del Potro. He now sits at around 65 in the world.

But the year is young. Where he is at the US Open is more important than where he sits now. But he’ll have to put up with playing on the back courts and not being given the top 10 treatment he does in Australia.

So too will the two new guns of Aussie tennis, Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis. They now face the reality of men’s tennis. They might get a couple wild cards but the reality is their rankings are such that they will be having to play qualifiers just to get in the most low level of tournaments on the ATP tour. For the most part they’ll be playing on the 2nd tier Challenger circuit. 

Krygios was ranked 183 in the world coming into the tournament and even after it won’t be in the top 150. Kokkinakis is ranked in the top 500. There is a mountain to climb yet.

They both looked great – but tennis is a cruel fight all the way up the top. The talk of Tomic being replaced is possible, but it is worth remembering Tomic has already made it to the top 30. He has shown he actually does have the game to get seeded in the grand slams, and once you get there, it’s up to you to do the work and make your luck. 

Krygios and Kokkinakis by contrast have played a couple good games in a row.

Anyone who thinks it is a guarantee they’ll get to the top should look at Belgian David Goffin. He is 23. In the fourth round of the 2012 French Open he took the first set off Roger Federer. He got up to number 42 in the world as a 21 year old.

He is now ranked 111 in the world.

He last played in the Challenger event in New Caledonia where he had to retire in the 2nd round with an injury, and he wasn’t even able to come to Australia and play in the qualifiers. It won’t matter too much because he was only defending 10 points from last year’s tournament where he got knocked out in the first round.

Potential is great, but the body and mind have to hold up.

And so to the final question that always comes up at any grand slam. How is Federer going?

I think he was playing well enough to beat anyone… except Nadal. Nadal’s game is what would have been created in a lab by the world’s best scientist charged with constructing a player who can beat Federer.

That top spin left-hand forehand to Federer’s backhand is just death. Federer’s weedy arm is just not strong enough to do what Wawrinka did in the final against it.

But the way he played against Tsonga and Murray suggests if the body holds up (that old-man back is always going to be an issue until he retires) he should have a good year. He drops to number 8 in the world, but that won’t matter too much.

Given how few points he has to defend at both Wimbledon and the US Open and a few other tournaments that he skipped last year, his current top 8 ranking is more a victim of time than of how he is playing. He made the semis and there’s no reason to think he can’t get back to the top 4. The trouble is with Wawrinka now top 3 and having the 2000 points from this tournament for the rest of the year, it’ll be hard to shift him. The fight for the 4th spot will be fierce.

Djokovic as well is looking ok. He was probably due a loss, and it took Wawrinka having the fortnight of his life to do it. Murray also looks like once he has a few matches under his belt and few months on the fitness track, he’ll be up there as well, despite his current ranking of number 6.

The status quo is still there for the most part, but Wawrinka showed it can be changed if you play your best and take the opportunities when they present themselves.

***

The other big thing is this stopped Nadal from getting to 14 grand slam titles. He remains 4 behind Federer. He’ll probably get there, but it is amazing how tough those last few can be.

So here’s the graph of the top grand slam winners (open era). I include tournaments missed, because you gotta turn up to win it.

Nadal is still on pace, but the body can go at any time… you don’t count them till they’re sitting on your mantelpiece.

The next graph starts from when each player won their first title onwards. It shows that Nadal’s peak certainly hasn’t been as dominant as Federer’s. When Federer learned how to win them, he learned how to win them a lot, but time is on his side – not perhaps in ever having as good a run as Federer, but in overhauling his career number of titles. The question is if his body will be for the probably 2 more year needed:

***

As usual with me this has been focussed on the men’s side. I will endeavour to do something on the women’s game soon (time permitting). Even with Wawrinka’s win, I think you can make a great case that the women’s game has much greater depth than the men’s – and that is a very odd situation given the past 30 years.

Today’s labour force figures demonstrated that sometimes economics is not about “good news and bad news”, sometimes it’s just all bad.

There really was nothing in today’s figures that holds any joy. But let us gird our loins and venture into the data.

Firstly the unemployment rate both seasonally adjusted and trend stayed at 5.8%

It was pretty close to 5.9% though. The seasonally adjusted rate came in at 5.845%, so about a hundred fewer jobs and the rate would be 5.9%.

But that said the trend rate was 5.79% which is a rock solid 5.8%.

A couple months ago I was hoping a bit of a plateau was beginning to appear, but alas, when we go in for a close-up the upward direction appears to continue:

The worst thing was this month employment actually fell. In seasonally adjusted terms employment decreased by 22,600, or 0.19%. As you can see the seasonally adjusted measure jumps around a bit, but even the trend growth was negative (just):

In annual terms things are still positive:

But that is small consolation, especially if we have a look at the past 20 years, and we see it is almost as bad as it was during the GFC, and only the 1990s recession had it worse:

And if we look at the 5 yearly jobs growth over the past 30 years, the picture isn’t much better (out of interest to get to a million jobs in 5 years, it’d need to get up to around 8.5%):

But the big problem is any job growth that there is, is in part-time work. On Twitter I posted a 3 year version of this graph, but here’s a 5 year one to give broader context – and what occurred during the GFC:

The drop in full-time work is not quite as bad as it was during the GFC (in trend terms at least), but it ain’t healthy at all:

Not surprisingly growth in hours worked is starting to go down, and when that goes negative you know we’re in bleak territory.

In 2012 the hours worked grew much slower than actual employment – suggesting an increase in part-time work and also more work being cut back than laid off. Now though they’re together:

As a result the growth in hours worked per person is also starting to decline after a bit of an increase in the middle of 2013:

This all adds up to an increase in the rate of people looking for full-time work:

After a slight decline in the gap between these two rates in the middle of last year, it has again widened. It’s not quite at the gap it was during the GFC, but neither does it seem to be peaking.

The employment to population ratio is also awful:

If we look at the historical view you can really see that a turning point happened in 2009-2010:

Most of this is due to the ageing population (I doubt we will ever see the 63% level again), but if you compare the total ratio to that of just 15-64yo you can see even percentage of those in the working age who are employed has also fallen (though this is also due to an increase in 15-24yos staying in education)

I might do a post on the states tomorrow, or I might save it for my next Guardian post because there are some interesting aspects when you break it down to state level, but I’ll leave you with this one graph which shows that Victoria now is the biggest anchor on the unemployment rate:

All in all, bleurgh. Who knew that a government coming in and saying they're open for business wouldn’t get turned around straight away. These figure aren’t the Liberal Party’s though. But the time to lay the blame on the ALP is fast running out for Hockey and Co.

From my Guardian post I have start using Datawrapper for the graphs. They are a bit more interactive, though pretty basic. I actually prefer just using Excel for some graphs, especially when I am using 2 Y-axis, or I want to combine columns and lines on the same graph.

But here are a few graphs with Datawrapper:

I might use these a bit more in future

A different version of the above

The Monthly labour force figures came out today and they do little to suggest the Treasury's prediction of 6.25% by June next year will be wildly inaccurate.

In seasonally adjusted terms the unemployment rate in October stayed flat at 5.7%. Although given September’s rate was 5.6755% and October’s was 5.7442%, it was all down to rounding that kept the rate flat when in fact it increased 0.068 percentage points.

In trend terms, the rate rose form 5.7% to 5.8%. But here again rounding is at work. The trend rate in September was 5.74% and in October it was estimated to be 5.75%. So as a result of rounding it increases up from 5.7% to 5.8%, but in reality it only increased by 0.0106 percentage points.

So the seasonally adjusted version shifted by more than the trend measure but the trend rate “increased” while the seasonally adjusted rate stayed “flat”.

Don’t you just love economic statistics?

At this point we should remember these are estimations. The seasonally adjusted rate for example sees the ABS being 95% confident that the rate shifted somewhere between in falling 0.3 points and rising 0.5 points.

But that statistical rhubarb aside, let’s get to the graphs:

First the 10 year picture finds us back where we were 10 years ago. Now back then being below 6% was seen as an economic wonder. Now if it were to stay at 5.8% there would be grumbles about a weak economy (and reasonably fair enough).

The close-up 18 months picture has us aching to see a plateau. It does however highlight that we haven’t quite got the the 5.8% mark yet, and for use to get to 6.25% would require a speeding up of unemployment as was seen after the brief semi-plateau observed at the end of 2012:

But the story today wasn’t so much about unemployment as employment. The number of jobs in trend terms fell 0.036%

And it makes for a pretty ugly annual growth figure. Employment growth is heading back to the level we saw during the GFC. Who knew it took more than just saying “Australia is open for business” to get people hiring workers?

Although intriguingly the hours worked in the month increased:

But it appears to have peaked in annual growth terms:

And when we compared growth in hours worked with growth in employment it seems that perhaps this peak of growth in hours means the disconnect between the two measures that has occurred since mid-2012 is about to end

It also means for the first time in 6 months the monthly hours worked per worker did not increase in October

But while the story of the labour force figures was the lack of job growth the really interesting part of that story is the breakdown of full-time and part time employment growth:

Trend part time jobs in October grew (just) while full-time work fell for the 6 month in a row.

And this meant that for the second month in a row there are now fewer full-time jobs than there was 12 months ago:

The drop in full-time work has hit men the hardest:

But lets compare the FT/PT growth by gender:

For men the growth in part-time work is quite dramatic, for women it’s pretty standard:

Not surprisingly the lack of full-time work for men has kept the gap between the unemployment rate of those looking for full-time work and the overall figure at pretty ugly highs.

What is also concerning is that while yes you can blame some of the fall in participation on the ageing workforce, the percentage of 15-64yo in employment continues to fall (though again some of this can be attributed to the decline in youth employment due to them staying at school longer now. I really wish the ABS did a monthly 25-54yo breakdown to get “prime working age” figures – and yes I can work it out using the “detailed” figures that will come out next week, but geez, that requires work!)

For me though an interestingly little nugget I discovered is that for the first time in 30 years the proportion of women employed (15-64yo) is less than it was 5 years earlier:

After the surge of women into the workforce in the 1980s and the continual strong growth during the late 1990s and first part of this century the growth it has fallen rather dramatically. For an economy that has thrived on the increase in participation of women this might be the big issue – ie not just ageing, but have we reached the peak level of women workers? Is two-thirds of adult women working the highest we can get?

My guess is that while more women-friendly work places and the breaking down of discrimination has led to the increase in women working – mostly in part-time work. For the number to go any higher would require, I think, some fairly major changes of culture in terms of which parent stays at home.

Finally a quick look at the states. And break out the champagne you austerity champions, QLD has had the strongest employment growth of the past 12 months:

A look however at the past year suggests its position is due to a nice pick up in QLD and a big fall in WA and NSW. But at least QLD’s unemployment rate remains steady at 5.9%. Good news:

Today the ABS released the latest labour force numbers. I haven’t done a full post on the number for a couple month due to the election, so let’s have a look and see how we’re doing.

First off, the numbers scream “ignore the seasonally adjusted rate”. On seasonally adjusted terms the unemployment rate in September actually fell from 5.8% to 5.6%.

But come one. Really? Maybe it’s the big turn around, but given the IMF on Wednesday thinks we’re looking at a 6.0% unemployment rate next year (and Treasury is gloomier still, thinking 6.25%) I’d bet no.

In trend terms – which is always much better when it comes to comparing changes from month to month, it stayed flat at 5.7%.

And anyway if we get down tot he nitty gritty, the seasonally adjusted figure in August was 5.7647% so it only just got rounded up to 5.8%, and September’s number was 5.6479%, so it only just got round down to 5.6%. Thus while it looks like a 0.2 percentage point drop it’s really only a 0.12 percentage point drop.

So I’m going with the 5.7% flat rate as more believable.

OK, the 5 year picture:

We’re not quite back to where we were during the GFC, but the path back to 6.0% has been pretty steady since mid 2012.

So let’s go in for our 18 month close up:

A steady rise, but and ever so slight suggestion of a plateau. I think that plateau depends a fair bit on whether or not this month’s figures get revised a bit next time round.

But that’s the big number, let’s flip open the hood and have a bit of a squirrel around and see what is really going on.

First, monthly employment growth:

There was an increase of 9,100 jobs in seasonally adjusted terms, but employment actually fell in trend terms:

Either way, it’s pretty soft (and by soft I mean fricken weak) as the annual employment growth rate really shows:

The hours worked measure is also interesting. In seasonally adjusted terms it fell (even though the amount of jobs increased). But in trend terms it has been increasing for the past 12 months:

This translates into an annual increase in hours worked that seems a bit at odds with the employment picture:

But it makes more sense when we look at what has happened with both over the past few years:

Here we see is that in 2012 hours were cut back, but employment continued to grow – through hours of full-time work being reduced, and/or the growth in part time work exceeding full time work. It is not too bad a thing really – much better for hours to fall than for total jobs to – it is always easier to increase hours than to go from no job to a job (and also a sign of a nicely flexible IR system).

Now we see a bit of a counter balance. Clearly the economy is not going gang busters, but where work is able to be increased it is being increased through either shifting part-time workers to full-time, or increasing the hours of full-time workers.

I would suggest the space between the total employment growth line and the hours worked bars from June 2012 to July 2103 exhibits a lot of spare capacity in the labour market of those already employed.

I would suspect that the hours worked growth will need to stay above the employment growth for a few more months before we have any chance of seeing a good increase in employment.

As a result the Hours worked per employed has now risen for the past 6 months, but is still well below pre-GFC levels:

So there is some employment growth but not much, and what there is, is mostly part-time

But even the part-time employment growth is slowing as can be seen pretty starkly when we compare monthly full-time and part-time employment growth:

Not surprisingly the unemployment rate of those looking for full-time work remains well above the total rate:

The gap has narrowed a bit, but looking back over the past 10 years, we see the gap is as big as it has been outside the GFC period:

The Participation Rate has received a fair bit of attention today, and not surprisingly because it has rather dived in the past few months:

Now it is always worth remembering that the participation rate can fall for a couple reasons. The first is the most obvious – people have given up looking for work. But the second is why they have done that. For some it is due to despair, for other it is due to age.

The ageing of the population remains with us, and I seriously doubt we’ll see a participation rate ever again at the near 66.0% that it reached in late 201o.

Indeed a look at the past 20 years suggests 2008-2012 was a abnormal level rather than the expected to be norm.

One thing to note is that since November 2010 the total participation has fallen 0.8 percentage points, but the 15-64year old participation rate has only fallen 0.3 percentage points in that time.

People are getting old, more than people are getting discouraged. For a better look at the ageing dynamic, Matt Cowgill has some excellent graphs on it all. My very quick and dirty look at the impact of the ageing of the population is to compare the change in the total employment to population ratio and that of 15-64yo since April 2008 (the peak level).

While during the GFC the both rates fell and rose around the same, since the end of 2010 the total rate has fallen faster. And as we know 2010 minus 1945 is 65 – or the beginning of the retirement age for baby boomers.

(I really should use the 25-54 age bracket, as what we’re also seeing now is that 15-24yo are staying in school/uni/TAFE more than they sued to, which is also reducing the total rate somewhat).

OK, now onto the growth of employment for men and women. Usually I look at total employment, but let’s just look at full-time work:

For the first time since the GFC period, annual male full-time employment fell in the past 12 months. While full-time employment for women is holding up, growth has moderated in the past 12 months.

Not a really wonderful picture of economic health. Yes the unemployment rate went down, but let’s not get too excited, when full-0time work numbers start picking up, then we can begin to say the corner has been turned.