The Aussie got a break from the doom and gloom originating from China and found some comfort in news coming from home. The third beat in the jobs report seems real: it isn’t a statistical skew.
AUD/USD managed to recover from the lows, but still remains under 0.70.
The Australian economy lost 1000 jobs in December, better than a loss of 10K expected. However, this was countered by an upwards revision to November’s number: 74.9K after 71.4K originally reported in that superb report.
Another positive surprise came from the unemployment rate, which now stands at 5.8%. Also here, it was accompanied by a revision for November, from 5.9% to 5.8%. Within the components, there was actually a gain in full time employment countered by a drop in part time employment. The participation rate is now at 65.1%.
The better than expected numbers allowed AUD/USD to rise from the abyss of 0.6919 and reach 0.6973. While it did criss-cross the 0.70 quite a few times in recent days, at this moment, the line seems far.
Earlier, another slide in stocks and more worries about the Chinese economy and oil prices all sent money out of risk currencies, to which the A% belongs.
