Australian employment soared in February and the jobless rate declined, highlighting the ongoing resilience of the nation’s labor market to restrictive monetary policy according to the latest Numberwang from the ABS. As a result, the currency rose as much as 0.6% after the data while yields on the policy-sensitive three-year government bond climbed to 3.7%. Traders now see a 60% chance of a rate cut in August, down from 80% before the data.
The strong jobs data contrasts with indicators ranging from business and consumer surveys to job vacancies and retail sales that suggest the economy is slowing.
The RBA on Tuesday left all options on the table with regards to rate moves, awaiting more data to show what’s going on. I am not sure this will help much!
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage points to 3.7 per cent in February, according to data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
And its worth noting that the current ABS labour market data is not matching the weak growth picture in the National Accounts or other second tier labour market data like jobs ads and applicants per job from Seek.
We continue to need to create around 35,000 jobs every month to stop unemployment rising, and of course the latest migration data which also came out today showed a record high net inward flow, of over 600,000.
Perhaps we will see a reversal in the data in March, because frankly the ABS Numberwanging whilst quite majestic, is simply deceptive. We need a much better jobs data compass.
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