The Department of Employment’s Monthly Leading Indicator of Employment (the Indicator) has risen for the second consecutive month in October 2014, after falling for ten months previously. In contrast, cyclical employment has now risen for eight consecutive months. The Indicator’s rise is attributable to three of the Indicator’s four components—the ANZ Newspaper Job Advertisements series, the Dun and Bradstreet Employment Expectations series and the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment Index. However, it is too early to confirm that employment growth is likely to be above its upwardly revised long-term trend of 1.4 per cent per annum in 6-9 months’ time, because the Indicator has risen for fewer than six months consecutively.
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.
