The Australian dollar has remained heavy, its barely off its lows for the session.
The data to hit it first were the jobs numbers for October:
- Australian jobs report - Unemployment rate 5.3% (vs. 5.2% expected)
- Australian dollar drops on the big miss on jobs report
- More on the Australian jobs data (trend data not so bad ... AUD does not care, drops)
- Responses to the Australian jobs data coming in - RBA "has a lot more work to do"
- Responses to the Australian jobs data - enough to sustain RBA easing bias
Then the data from China didn't do it any favours:
- China October: Industrial Production 4.7% y/y (vs. expected 5.4%) & Retail sales 7.2% y/y (vs. 7.8% expected)
- AUD drops after China activity data misses for the month
- China data - miss for industrial production and retail sales in October - more
Some further comments on the employment report via BIS Oxford Economics:
- "While the forward indicators aren't suggesting that we'll see sustained declines, it does indicate that slower growth in employment is likely to materialise over the near term; unsurprising, given the residential construction downturn and the ongoing weakness in the retail sector
- The decline was matched against a rise in the unemployment rate - to 5.3% - and a fall in the participation rate - to 66% - indicating that slack in the labour force is now captured in both measures. And with the underemployment rate also rising, to 8.5%, the data clearly confirms that there is plenty of slack in the economy."
(comments to Business Insider, bolding is mine)
