Gentle turning point
Aussie employment increased by +14,700 in September, so even now annual employment growth is humming along at a sprightly +311,600 or +2.47 per cent, and the composition this month was positive.
New South Wales saw its rocketing employment growth rate come back down to earth with a thump in September (-23,000 in the month), while surprise package Queensland accounted for the bulk of the employment growth with a +25,000 increase in September.
The participation rate was down a notch from record highs, and the unemployment rate ticked down from 5.26 per cent to 5.20 per cent.
The smoother trend unemployment rate was flat at 5.3 per cent.
Pleasingly, the underemployment rate was down a bit to 8.3 per cent, though it's hard to see how we get to a tight labour market and robust wages growth from here given tumbling construction and weaker job advertisements figures.
At the state level Queensland has oodles of slack as the participation leapt in September, while the trend unemployment rates are low in New South Wales (4.5 per cent) and Victoria (4.8 per cent), and Western Australia is now showing a great improvement at 5.7 per cent.
The trend annual growth in monthly hours worked was just +1.8 per cent, which is soft given the growth in the labour force over that time.
The wrap
Overall, it was good to see a positive figure for employment again, and quarterly employment growth was surprisingly strong at +87,650 for the strongest quarterly result since Q4 2017!
This rate of jobs growth buys some breathing space, although leading indicators have been almost unanimously weak.
Meanwhile, for some reason plenty of clueless housing market analysis continues to focus on retrospective credit growth figures.
Of course, historic credit growth will hit a nadir when volumes and prices have moved lower in sync (remember the 'plumbing of record lows' in June 2012?), but it's the worst of all predictors of future housing market performance as I discussed in a little more detail here.
The Aussie dollar got a little bump on today's employment print.
