The economy has added more than 1000 full-time jobs a day over that past six months, according to the figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Thursday.

The result means the Coalition government is on track to match former prime minister Tony Abbott's optimistic promise of 1 million new jobs in five years, made when he took office in September 2013.

Since then, 658,300 jobs have been added. If the economy continues at the current rate, the government will achieve that target before September 2018.

"Full-time employment has now increased by around 220,000 persons since September 2016, and makes up the majority of the 250,000 person increase in employment over the period," the Bureau's chief economist Bruce Hockman said.

Treasurer Scott Morrison welcomed the result in parliament on Thursday.

"That is the highest rate of jobs growth we have seen in a full financial year since before the global financial crisis," he said.

But the growth in jobs has failed to give rise to greater incomes, with the growth in average weekly male earnings slipping again to stall at their lowest level since World War II.

Thursday's figures show a paltry growth rate of 1.56 per cent, well below the cost of living at 1.9 per cent.

The ABS only began its current wage price index in 1997, so any long-run historical comparison relies on the average weekly earnings measure.

The figure is cruder than Wednesday's wages index, which grew just 0.5 per cent in the three months to June 30, or 1.9 per cent over the year. The record low is placing mounting pressure on household budgets by barely keeping pace with the cost of living.

The participation rate, which refers to the number of people either employed or actively looking for work, was up 0.1 percentage points at 65.1 per cent.

Economists are usually sceptical about single-month job gains but Thursday's result is the fifth chunky gain in as many months.

"The past volatility of the data means it pays not to get too excited by strong employment data and not to get too worried by weak data," Capital Economics chief economist Paul Dales said.

"But the recent improvement in the labour market is an upside risk to our cautious economic growth, inflation and interest rate forecasts."

There are still more than 720,000 Australians who are unemployed, the figures show, while more than 1.1 million are underemployed.

Over the past year, the three states with the strongest growth in employment were Tasmania [4.0 per cent], Victoria [3.1 per cent] and Queensland [2.7 per cent], while NSW is nearing full employment with only 5 per cent of the population unemployed.

Indeed economist Callam Pickering said it remained difficult to square away strong employment figures and high business confidence, with such low levels of consumer confidence.

"Normally a strong labour market is associated with an enthusiastic household sector, which indicates to me that conditions on the ground are perhaps not as rosy as the employment figures suggest," he said.

Labor's acting employment spokesman, Ed Husic, said workers still felt insecure about their future.

"You can still see underemployment is a big issue," he said. "That is one of the factors that is fuelling a view amongst Australian workers about how secure their work is and whether or not the jobs are actually meeting their needs."

TD Securities economist Annette Beacher said strong upward trends in full-time employment and hours worked underpinned the Reserve Bank's cautious optimism on the labour market.

"These are expected to spark wages growth from current record low levels," she said.

As a result, Ms Beacher said she did not expect the central bank to raise rates until May 2018.

with Peter Martin