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13 Mar 2014
Flash: What to expect from Australia's job data? - Westpac
FXStreet (Bali) - According to Sean Callow, FX Strategist at Westpac, while Australia has enjoyed numerous upside data surprises recently, jobs growth has not been among the positives.
Key Quotes
Indeed the headline jobs figure has been weaker than consensus in 6 of the past 7 months. With total employment averaging a miserable -2.6k jobs over the past 6 months, consensus is for a rebound to +15k for the Feb report (11:30am Syd/8:30am Sing/HK), with a range of 0 to 30k.
Westpac looks for +20k, partly because a growing economy should be creating at least some jobs net each month and because of improved partial indicators of the job market since late 2013. We agree with the median forecast for the unemployment rate to hold at 6.0%, a high since July 2003 (participation rate flat at 64.5%). AUD should be very jittery into the data, with the past 2 jobs disappointments producing AUD/USD selloffs of around 1 cent.
Key Quotes
Indeed the headline jobs figure has been weaker than consensus in 6 of the past 7 months. With total employment averaging a miserable -2.6k jobs over the past 6 months, consensus is for a rebound to +15k for the Feb report (11:30am Syd/8:30am Sing/HK), with a range of 0 to 30k.
Westpac looks for +20k, partly because a growing economy should be creating at least some jobs net each month and because of improved partial indicators of the job market since late 2013. We agree with the median forecast for the unemployment rate to hold at 6.0%, a high since July 2003 (participation rate flat at 64.5%). AUD should be very jittery into the data, with the past 2 jobs disappointments producing AUD/USD selloffs of around 1 cent.