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Australia’s labour market report for January was undoubtedly strong, with the unemployment rate holding at 4.1% following the sharp fall in December.
1. Australia’s unemployment rate remained at 4.1% in January (in unrounded terms it declined slightly from 4.09% to 4.08%) against consensus expectations for a rise to 4.2%.
It was reasonable to expect a modest rise in the jobless rate given declines of at least 0.2ppts have historically often - but not always - been followed by some retracement. Obviously that didn’t happen this time.
The measured unemployment rate in Australia also rose in January in each of the past 3 years (see chart), in part because of an elevated number of unemployed future job starters. The ABS wrote about that effect at those times but did not today.
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