Treasurer Jim Chalmers has hit back at the “real snobbiness” of Coalition criticism about the rapid growth in government-funded jobs, doubling down on his assessment that the economy is not too strong, which is at odds with how the Reserve Bank views conditions.

After the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on Thursday that more than 64,000 people found jobs in September, opposition employment spokeswoman Michaelia Cash accused the Albanese government of simply increasing the size of the bureaucracy to create jobs.