Labor candidate for Dubbo Stephen Lawrence and shadow treasurer Michael Daley said the Coalition had let the Orana and Far West regions down and cost people jobs.

"Unemployment in the Central West is significantly above the state average - and it's a major indictment on the Baird government which has no other agenda except privatising assets and axing people's jobs," Mr Daley said.

The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the unemployment rate has increased by 3.8 per cent, compared to the previous month, leaving 7500 people out of work in the area. However Mr Grant said the figures weren't an accurate representation and the ABS appeared to back up his claims.

"Those figures are extremely unreliable and not reflective of the situation in the electorate," Mr Grant said.

Mr Grant said he was part of a parliamentary inquiry last year that looked at the skills shortage and said the findings were eye-opening.

"The alarming evidence we found was that it wasn't that there was a shortage of jobs for people in Regional NSW, but the greater number of people weren't willing to do the jobs on offer," he said.

"Modern people have the right to choose what they want to do but the problem in Australia is that we have people who would prefer to take welfare than get a job that pays a wage.

"You only have to talk to Roger Fletcher, he has to rely on grey nomads and migrants because young people won't come and do the job. There are plenty of employers in that situation and they find it very frustrating."

Mr Grant said his government had worked hard to reduce regional unemployment, and said infrastructure projects like the redevelopment at Dubbo Hospital were just an example of the government's investment in jobs.

ABS director of labour force Stephen Collett said a degree of caution was needed when looking at the numbers, because only a small number of people were surveyed in each region.

"The thing with regional data is that we survey 55,000 people across the country but once that is divided up into regions, we aren't talking to many people. A small sample size makes data more volatile and can produce some surprise results," Mr Collett said.

"You can even get variations because some months people will actively be looking for work and others they might not.

"My advice to any region is to look at what is happening over the long term. Is the unemployment rate going up or down, is it consistently high? That's the best way to find out what is really happening."

The shadow treasurer said decisions by the Coalition like privatising the electricity network, restructuring TAFE and council mergers were resulting in lost jobs. He said people should expect Essential Energy to be privatised as soon as the election is finished.

Mr Lawrence said Labor had a local jobs plan that would "protect country people from the city liberal's extreme policies". He said Ogdens Coaches losing a tender to a Victorian company under Mr Grant's watch showed he had dropped the ball.

"Troy Grant showed his true colours on local jobs when we had the Ogdens fiasco recently with Troy claiming he could have prevented the tender being lost to a local company, but was not able to because he was not 'aware of it until after the deal essentially was done'," Mr Lawrence said.

"The fact is our state member is not on top of local issues and has no local jobs plan".