Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his ministers have pounced on the latest jobs figures after a week of being bogged down by the woes of Barnaby Joyce.
A further 16,000 jobs were created in January, following on from the record of over 400,000 people who entered the workforce in 2017.
The jobless rate edged down to 5.5 per cent, from an upwardly revised 5.6 per cent in December.
"We've now delivered 16 consecutive months of jobs growth, the longest uninterrupted run of jobs growth in our history," Mr Turnbull told parliament on Thursday.
"Month after month, adding more jobs. It hasn't happened by luck. It's the result of policy after policy, measure after measure, designed to grow and strengthen our economy."
Treasurer Scott Morrison and a parade of ministers took the opportunity in the final Question Time of the parliamentary fortnight to express the virtues of a strong labour market, as Labor continued to quiz Mr Joyce, the deputy prime minister, over potential ministerial misconduct.
However, the January figures released Thursday included a near 50,000 drop in full-time employment, the biggest decline in a year, but was offset by an increase of almost 66,000 in part-time workers.
Labor's employment spokesman Brendan O'Connor said the government might like to continue to boast about job numbers, but it was doing nothing to deal with underemployment and the casualisation of the workforce.
Nor did it have plans to lift wages growth, which remains at around two per cent, close to the rate of inflation.
Mr O'Connor said there are 1.1 million Australians looking for more work but not being able to find it.
"People cannot find enough work to pay the bills," he told reporters in Canberra.
"If you are waiting by the phone to see if you have a shift at work, that provides no certainty, it creates anxiety in families, for working people, when they have no guarantee of minimum hours."
BIS Oxford Economics' Sarah Hunter said despite the spectacular pace of jobs growth last year there is still considerable spare labour capacity in the economy.
While job vacancy surveys highlight that firms are still looking to hire, the labour market can comfortably meet this demand through rising participation and the elimination of underemployment.
"This means wages growth will be subdued for at least the rest of this year, with the average worker unlikely to see their pay rise by much more than inflation," she told AAP.
Wages data for the December quarter will be released next Wednesday.
