US economy surprises
Here was a neat surprise!
Consensus had expected the US unemployment rate to be in the double digits in August, but instead the official unemployment rate fell to just 8.4 per cent.
Considering some had projected unemployment hitting 30 per cent in recent months this is a stunningly positive result in the context of everything that's been going on.
The underemployment rate also declined again to sit at about 14 per cent, now well down from April's worrisome peak of 23 per cent.
The participation rate also improved again to 61.7 per cent, although it's still way below pre-pandemic levels.
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by +1.37 million in August, while the figure for July was revised a little lower to +1.73 million.
The figures have been so wild this year it's perhaps easier to look at the figure for total employment to get a high-level picture of what's just played out.
This chart confirms that the rebound is well underway, with well over 10 million jobs recovered since the April nadir.
However, the economy will have to generate the same number of jobs again to get total employment back close to where it was in March, with employment plunging by an unprecedented 20.8 million in the month of April alone.
And the next 10 million jobs are set to take much longer than four months to create, with so many permanent redundancies having now taken hold.
Stand by for election fever and related turbulence.
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Australia's retail turnover continued to balloon to record heights in July as Aussies continued to deploy their dollars at home as best they could:
More detail as ever from the data king James Foster here.
