Australia Unemployment Rate Preview and EUD/AUD Outlook

(November 12, Thu) Australia unemployment rate - October: After a surprising increase in payrolls (+40.6K) in September, a modest decline in employment (-10K) is expected in October. This should have pushed the unemployment rate +0.1 percentage points higher to 5.8%. Although economic recovery has been robust in Australia, unemployment rate may continue to rise from current level in coming months. However, the peak should be lower than what was expected by the market in the first half of the year.

In September, the number of persons looking for full-time work increased by 9500 to 497 400 and the number of persons looking for part-time work decreased by 13 300 to 161 200. This halted the recent trend that workers looked for part-time jobs due to reduction in full-time unemployment. We believe the number of workers looking for full-time jobs should have increased further in October.

Also, aggregate monthly hours worked increased 13.4 million hours to 1522.4 million hours in September. This was driven by improvement of economic conditions. The trend should have continued in October.