Jobs boom for NSW
It was another awkward day for the ABS, with further data upload timeliness issues.
When the detailed figures did finally materialise employment surprised with a massive +39,100 gain in January 2019, including a walloping +65,400 full time jobs.
This takes the annual trend gains all the way up to +296,000 or +2.4 per cent.
There are now 12¾ million employed Aussies for the first time.
And we need a whole new y-axis for New South Wales, which has added an astonishing +162,000 to net employment since a year earlier, to a total of 4.1 million employed.
It really is a tale of two states when it comes to employment growth, as the headlines will no doubt remind us forthwith.
Record low NSW unemployment
Moving on to unemployment, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was steady in January 2019 at 5.02 per cent.
And zooming in the chart, the unemployment rate just ticked up a notch off 6-year lows...
An increase in Western Australia's unemployment rate to 6.8 per cent was offset with more amazing results in New South Wales, which reported its lowest ever unemployment rate of only 3.9 per cent.
Some ¾ of the full time jobs have been created in NSW and Victoria over the past year, reflected in their respectively very low trend unemployment rates.
Finally, there was a very slight improvement in the trend for hours worked, up to +1.6 per cent over the year (which is only flat in per capita terms).
Late cycle lags
Certainly a beautiful set of numbers versus what was expected, and the Reserve Bank certainly will no doubt enjoy seeing this result.
Unemployment rates can fall low late in a housing market and construction cycle, however, and the leading indicators have been far less inspiring to say the least.
Indeed, Bill Evans at Westpac has a front-row seat to lending and construction trends, and he burst into the headlines today to forecast not one but two interest rate cuts in 2019.
I met the genial Bill for the first time in November when we presented on a great panel at the Business Insider event in Sydney...and he was already 'healthily sceptical' about central bank forecasts, even back then.
If proven correct this would take the cash rate to a fresh low of just 1 per cent.
If proven correct this would take the cash rate to a fresh low of just 1 per cent.
It's 2019, and it's game on.
