Australian employers added the most jobs since March 2012, pushing unemployment lower and suggesting the central bank is unlikely to reduce already record-low interest rates.
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Unemployment fell by 103,000 to 1.75 million in the three months to September, according to the Office for National Statistics.
On these trend numbers, the annual rate of employment growth has been accelerating over the past six months and it’s now a solid 2.3 per cent, which is well above the long-term average rate. We have over 700,000 job vacancies showing we have an opportunity to help unemployed people back into work.
The total earnings, including bonuses, of people in jobs in Q3 increased by 3% from a year earlier. The benchmark cash-rate target has been at 2% since May.
The total number of people with jobs also surged by 58,600 in the month, almost four times what economists had expected.
“We will monitor the gap with the United Kingdom unemployment rate while continuing to pursue our policies for a low tax and higher wage economy that will benefit Scottish workers”.
South Australia has maintained the unenviable status of having the worst unemployment rate in the country, despite a minor drop in the latest figures for the state.
“The strength in year-on-year growth rates continues to remain strongest in economies least exposed to mining”, he said.
“But we have to admit that if this strengthening of the labor market is sustained, the chances of rates falling to 1.5 percent next year, as we have been forecasting, are slimmer”.
The Bureau of Statistics figures reveal the sunshine state’s jobless rate has fallen to 6.2 per cent in October, down from 6.3 per cent in September.
That handily beat forecasts for 6.2 percent, which would have been unchanged from the September reading.
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Despite taking the monthly “labour force lottery” data with a grain of salt, head of ANZ Australian economics Justin Fabo admits that underlying jobs growth has been strong for a run of months. Especially following comments from governor Mark Carney that the MPC is looking away from just the inflation rate, employment figures are closely watched by economists and policy makers.
