Australian employment comes in strong

We don't rule out further easing from the RBA before the year-end, but they have done a lot already, and today's strong labour data suggest that the Fed is more likely to be easing before the RBA moves again.

The 41K employment change is even more impressive than it first looks as 34.5K of that total was full-time employment, and only 6.7K part-time. The consensus view was for only a 14K increase (ING f +37K). We were not too surprised by this data, which we find roughly follows a negative serial correlation pattern (in short, it saw-tooths).

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.2%, but that was also well within expectations and came despite an increase in the participation rate.