It takes an average of six months for a jobless person to find work in Tamworth, in a city where women are struggling harder than men to find work.
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There are now 9600 unemployed people in the region, with the jobless rate spiking to 6.6 per cent in recent Commonwealth data.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) labour force survey for September, issued this week, shows the pain is not being shared evenly.
Bureau data shows in the New England North West Region 61.6 per cent of all men are employed, compared to just 54.7 per cent of women.
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Business NSW Regional Manager Joe Townsend said the gender gap may actually not be such a bad thing.
"We're fortunate enough in regional NSW, that the cost of living is so affordable that households can actually live off a single income," he said.
One member of the family often chooses to take care of the family rather than work. Disproportionately that person tends to be female, he said.
"Because of our cost of living and the lifestyles that we can choose, then we have the luxury of not having to have both adults in employment. And that's something that hopefully people that live in Sydney, Newcastle and those places that are looking at relocating will weigh up.
"They can have a really great lifestyle up here and only one individual may have to work."
About 800 more people were looking for work and couldn't find it than were a month before. But that's largely because more people are looking, rather than fewer jobs being available.
Mr Townsend said the region is definitely in recession, but a relatively soft one compared with Sydney, where 6.8 per cent of people are unemployed, or the Illawarra, 7.2 per cent.
The new stats show the downturn is easing locally, he said.
Some 58 per cent of the population of Tamworth's statistical region is working, up from just 52.3 per cent in August.
But Tamworth is "sitting on a fluctuation point".
Mr Townsend said the pandemic recession had spurred Australians to start saving far more of their income.
Nationally the saving rate jumped from 3 per cent to 26 per cent, he said.
As the pandemic eases he hopes Australians will start spending again, driving a recovery.
Nationally some 6.9 per cent of Australians are unemployed, up 0.1 percentage points since August.
There are 358,000 fewer Australians in work than were employed a year ago.
ABS data is based on phone and online surveys.
The new data covers the period before the rollback of JobKeeper subsidies and JobSeeker wage payments at the end of September.
The average unemployed person spends 26 weeks looking for work before finding it, the new statistics show.
The unemployment spike put the lie to April ABS figures, which showed growth in local jobs.
Those figures were labelled a statistical anomaly at the time.
Andrew Messenger
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
