The data:
- Employment Change December: -22.6K (expected 10.0K, prior 15.4 k, revised from 21.0K)
- Unemployment Rate December: 5.8% (expected 5.8%, prior 5.8%)
- Full Time Employment Change December: -31.6K (prior was +10.5K, revised from+15.5K)
- Part Time Employment Change December: +9.0K (prior was +4.9K, revised from +5.5K)
- Participation Rate December: 64.6 (expected is 64.8% 64.8%)
–
For 2013 in total:
- Just 54.6k jobs added
- Made up of –67.5k full-time jobs and +122k part-time jobs
- Employment is growing much slower than the population
Westpac say:
had the participation rate held at the average seen since March 2003, and not fallen as much as it has, the unemployment rate would now be 7.0% rather than the Dec print of 5.8%
This is a weak labour market. With anecdotes of firms forcing more employees to take leave over Christmas and rumours building of further retrenchments to come in many business services companies, we are closely watching how the data unfolds in early 2014.
