For a second month in a row, Australia reported a much better than expected jobs report: the land down under gained no less than 71.4K jobs in November, much better than a drop of 10K that was expected. The unemployment rate dropped from 6% to 5.8%.
The excellent news raised some eyebrows but also sent AUD/USD all the way to 0.73333.
The good news continues with the details of the report: the unemployment rate fell to 5.8% as aforementioned, and this is on top of a rise in the participation rate from 65% to 65.3%, so it’s excellent also here.
Out of all jobs gained, a majority, 41.6K, were full time jobs and 29.7K were part time. The only negative number was a small downwards revision for October: a rise of 56.1K instead of 58.3K originally reported, but this is certainly on the sidelines.
AUD/USD leaping on the Australian jobs report, and sliding a bit since then. Will these gains hold? This is an open question as many analysts see the report as “too good to be true”.