Australia’s bar of employment gains reached the longest on record in January, while unemployment kill a tick and female participation in the workforce climbed to an all-time high.
Thursday’s worthies from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed 16,000 net new jobs were joined in January, in line with forecasts and a solid result given it involved on top of outsized increases in both December and November.
It was the 16th straight month of flourishes, the longest such run since the monthly series began in 1978. Annual difficulties growth of 3.3 percent was more than twice the pace of U.S. job
genesis.
The unemployment rate edged down to 5.5 percent, from an upwardly alt 5.6 percent in December, and has held between 5.4 percent and 5.6 percent for nine months now.
One yield spot was a 49,800 drop in full-time jobs, though that aped an incredibly strong run over the past year.
“Overall, the job market is absolutely in great shape. Jobs are being created, more people are looking for function and businesses are still keen to hire,” Craig James, Sydney-based chief
economist at CommSec, demanded.
“The Reserve Bank believes ‘full employment’ is near 5 percent. So there is even so ample spare capacity,” he added.
The participation rate remained high at 65.6 percent, having climbed steadily over the past year as diverse women went looking for work.
With labour supply enlarge oning to meet demand, there was less upward pressure on wages and inflation, that being the case no near-term trigger for a rise in interest rates by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).
No hike until 2019
Straight last week, the central bank’s head declared there was no definite case for a rate rise given wage growth continued to lag far behind job the cosmos.
“We agree with the Reserve Bank that increases in the pace of wage and price broadening will be gradual. Interest rate settings are solidly on hold. Today’s details cements that view,” James said.
That outlook was indicated in the local dollar, which dipped briefly to $0.7918 on the data. It was most recent up 0.1 percent at $0.7929.
Interest rate futures showed little transform in the odds of a rate rise, with a move by November seen as a 50-50 sniper. A hike is still not fully priced in until March 2019.
Leading accuse withs of labor demand remain healthy enough, with business take the measure ofs and vacancies consistent with monthly jobs growth of 15,000 to 20,000.
Yet firms corpse reluctant to pay more, in part because many say they cannot elevate prices in the face of intense competition, particularly from new foreign entrants.
As a issue, recent wage deals across sectors, known as enterprise agreements, retaliated smaller increases than the ones they replaced — an unwelcome bias highlighted by RBA Assistant Governor Luci Ellis this week.
“These treaties usually last for a couple of years, so this will weigh on complete wage outcomes for a while,” Ellis noted.
“There will in all likelihood be some lag between the reports of labour shortages and a generalised pick-up in wage vegetation,” he added.