Unemployment tumbles to 5.8%

Advertisement
imgres

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released its Labour Force survey for March and the result is another consensus buster, which was expecting 2,500 jobs and got:

  • Employment increased 18,100 to 11,553,200. Full-time employment decreased 22,100 to 8,029,100 and part-time employment increased 40,200 to 3,524,000.
  • Unemployment decreased 29,900 (4.0%) to 713,200. The number of unemployed persons looking for full-time work decreased 16,700 to 509,800 and the number of unemployed persons only looking for part-time work decreased 13,300 to 203,400.
  • The unemployment rate decreased 0.2 pts to 5.8%, based on unrounded estimates.
  • Participation rate decreased 0.2 pts to 64.7%.
  • Aggregate monthly hours worked increased 8.0 million hours (0.5%) to 1,617.2 million hours.

Detail is less strong than headline but the dollar immediately piled on half a cent and smashed through 94 cents to 94.3. Release the bullhawks!

Advertisement

More to come from UE…

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.