Treasury head hoses ABS jobs numberwang

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Treasury head John Fraser in the Senate this morning on global growth:

“There is no clear path ahead…The volatility has been significant. Some would argue that the interest rate increase would be factor…others say it’s China, and others would… point to the weakness in commodity prices, which is far greater than people have been expecting, certainly we were expecting…We are probably swimming against the tide in Australia…The weak points clearly remain South Australia, of which we’re all aware and that’s a broader structural issue…Western Australia…is clearly doing worse than what was expected at budget time…The strength in the labour market is encouraging.”

Bloomberg has more:

Australia has had some technical issues with its labor data, which “look a little bit better” than would otherwise have been the case, the secretary to the Treasury said, commenting on record employment growth in the final quarter of 2015.

John Fraser, the nation’s top economic bureaucrat, told a parliamentary panel in Canberra Wednesday that he held discussions on the employment figures with the chief statistician this week. He didn’t elaborate on the meeting but said the recent strength in the jobs market is encouraging.

There were some “technical issues” in October and November that may have made the employment figures “look a little bit better than otherwise would be the case,” he said. The technical issues relate to “rolling off” of participants in the labor survey.

Australia’s economy added 55,000 jobs in October and a further 74,900 in November, before shedding 1,000 in December to produce the record quarterly gain. Questions regarding the accuracy of the data have been raised following acknowledgment by the statistics agency in 2014 of measurement challenges.

And my old favourite, the NAB survey vs ABS numberwang:

sadfa

That about sums it up, yeh.

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.