The Australian employment data results are here: Australia – October Employment Change: +24.1K (vs. expected +20K)
Some quick views from analysts (I’ll add more as they become available):
JPMorgan:
- Given all the noise we’ve had in the last two or three months and the confusion around the treatment of the seasonal numbers, it’s a decent result, but not particularly much of a surprise.
- … But I think unfortunately there was a credibility hit to the numbers. So I think there’s going to be a challenge now, for months I suspect, to see how the new regime plays out.
- I doubt it has any material implications (for the Australian dollar). But I think the Reserve Bank would look at this and take a bit of comfort, given that unemployment didn’t go up and some of those other indicators look pretty firm.
ANZ:
- We continue to remain cautious about over-interpreting the figures given recent revisions and methodological changes.
- In particular, we note that the official labour market figures (which now show a slow deterioration in the unemployment rate since April this year) are painting a much weaker picture of the labour market compared to the broader suite of indicators that generally point to improving conditions.
RBC Capital Markets:
- Even with the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics)’s best efforts to get the seasonal adjustment right, it will be a while before faith can be restored. So market has not really moved a lot on this and we will take it with a bag of salt, not just the grain.
CBA:
- Today’s version of the numbers looks quite encouraging, there’s a decent lift in employment and full time employment. It looks like unemployment is starting to level out in the low sixes. At face value, it should be seen at a quite a decent result, one that looks more in tune with other surveys like job vacancies and business surveys.
- Clearly there will be some suspicion about the reliability of these numbers for a while as we all digest recent changes. Just about every leading indicator suggests that we’re at a turning point around now. It suggests that the last published view by the Reserve Bank that we weren’t going to see any sustained improvement in the labour market until 2016 does look a bit pessimistic given what we’ve seen over the last few months.
- The Aussie was down and up after the data which tells you something about the uncertainty in trying to interpret these numbers at the moment. The RBA has made it pretty clear that they would like a lower currency, and the market has been delivering that over the last few days … the RBA would certainly be comfortable with a lower currency.
Westpac:
- Given all the volatility in the Labour Force Survey of late, which was caused by the ABS altering the survey questionnaire in Aug and Sep resulting in a change in respondent behaviour, it is promising that we are now seeing labour market outcomes that are more in line with other labour market indicators
- Westpac is expecting the through the year pace of employment growth to accelerate to around 1.2%yr by year end (due to base effects we would have to see some very soft numbers in Nov and Dec to prevent this) but this will not be enough to stop the unemployment rate peaking at around 6.3% in early 2014
- (on the AUD) We expect the near term pressure to remain skewed to the downside, with rallies up to 0.8620/30 likely to be viewed as selling opportunities.
