Australian labour market report for April 2019

Employment Change: +28.4k

  • expected 15K, prior 25.7K

Unemployment Rate: 5.2%

  • expected 5.0%, prior revised higher to 5.1% from 5.0%

The above are the two 'headlines"

More:

Full Time Employment Change, -6.3k

  • prior was 48.3K

Part Time Employment Change, +34.7k

  • prior was -22.6K

Participation Rate, 65.8%

  • expected 65.7%, prior 65.7%

A jump for the unemployment rate. The RBA tells us they are watching what the trend is for unemployment. Higher participation is a bit of a caveat to this. Up for the second consecutive month.

Employment growth on the month is solid. A caveat is the full time / part time split.

I don't think this data release is a smoking gun for an imminent rate cut from the RBA. Next meeting is June 4. ps. I think this earlier data point is going to be a concern for the RBA though.

----

OK, the above is the seasonally adjusted data, which gets the immediate attention. The 'tren' data follows. ABS says the trend data is a better guide. Bolding below is mine:

  • trend unemployment rate remained steady in April 2019 at 5.1%
  • "The unemployment rate remained at 5.1 per cent for a second month, 0.4 percentage points lower than the same time last year"
  • trend monthly employment increased by around 21,000
  • Full-time employment increased by 15,000
  • part-time employment increased by 6,000
  • Over the past year, trend employment increased by 311,000 persons (2.5 per cent) which was above the average annual growth over the past 20 years (2.0 per cent).
  • "The rise in employment over the past year was supported by an increase of around 260,000 full-time and 50,000 part-time employed persons,"
  • trend monthly hours worked increased by 0.3 per cent in April 2019 and by 2.8 per cent over the past year. This was above the 20 year average year-on-year growth of 1.7 per cent.
  • trend monthly underemployment rate remained steady at 8.3 per cent in April 2019 and decreased by 0.2 percentage points over the year
  • The monthly trend underutilisation rate increased by 0.1 percentage points to 13.4 per cent, and decreased by 0.6 percentage points over the year

The trend data is not painting as bad a picture as the s.a. data.

The Australian dollar is lower, expectations of an RBA rate cut in June (market pricing) is over 50% now after the data release.

--

Background: