Jobs rebound strongly

ABS Labour Force for April is out and the news is good:

Employment increased 37,400 to 12,099,300. Full-time employment decreased 11,600 to 8,227,400 and part-time employment increased 49,000 to 3,871,900
Unemployment decreased 19,100 to 732,300. The number of unemployed persons looking for full-time work decreased 12,300 to 514,200 and the number of unemployed persons only looking for part-time work decreased 6,800 to 218,000.
Unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 pts to 5.7%.
Participation rate remained steady at 64.8%.
Monthly hours worked in all jobs decreased 4.3 million hours (0.26%) to 1,659.5 million hours.

Well above consensus. Some weirdness in falling hours worked but good headline numbers.

More to come.

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.