Stellar jobs report from Australia

We had not anticipated such a strong contribution from full-time jobs. Even our outlying forecast of +40,000 employment growth in Australia, underpredicted the actual outcome. These grew by 40,100, more than reversing the 19,900 decline the previous month.

With only 14,100 part-time jobs adding to the total, this is a much higher quality labour report than we had been expecting. And it is further enhanced by the unemployment rate, which stayed at 5.6% despite a rise in the participation rate to 65.3% from 65.1%. What this shows is that even new entrants to the labour force are finding it easy to obtain work.