AUD/USD jumps 15 pips as Australia’s Unemployment Rate drops to 6.8%

• AUD/USD jumps to a session high of 0.7587 on the upbeat jobs report. 
• Australia’s jobless rate fell to 6.8% in November versus expectations for 7%. 
• The economy added more jobs than expected, easing pressure on the RBA to do more easing.

A surprise decline in Australia’s jobless rate is pushing the Aussie dollar higher against its US counterpart. 

The Unemployment rate fell to 6.8% in November from October’s 7%, the data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics at 00:30 GMT showed. The jobless rate was forecast to remain unchanged at 7%. 

The AUD/USD pair jumped 15 pips to a session high of 0.7587 in response to the decline in the Unemployment rate and was last seen trading near 0.7578. 

Other details of the monthly jobs report also painted a positive picture of the Australian economy. The country gained 90K jobs in November versus 50K expected and 178.8K previous. Fulltime Employment rose 84.2K versus 97K previous, and the Participation Rate ticked higher to 66.1% from 65.8%. 

The data is likely to ease pressure on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to do more easing. Coupled with the coronavirus vaccine optimism, that is likely to keep the AUD better bid while heading into the Christmas holidays. 

The central bank’s latest December meeting released early this week stressed that “substantial tightening” in the labor market was needed to lift wage growth and inflation. 

Technical levels