Australia reported disappointing job figures: the level of employment fell by 12.2K, significantly worse than a slide of 4.7K expected. Worse off, at least for the headlines, was a leap in the unemployment rate from 6.1% to 6.4%, worse than 6.2% that was predicted.
AUD/USD, which hovered above 0.77 just before the publication, fell to a low of 0.7643, and finds it hard to recover from there.
The weak data raises a chance of another rate cut in March, after the RBA just set a record low level.
The country lost 28.1K full time jobs and actually gained 15.9K part time jobs. The details look worse than the headline. The participation rate remained unchanged at 64.8%, thus the rise in the unemployment rate was not influenced by this.
One caveat though: the government body responsible for publishing the data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics warned about volatility in the sample survey. There were issues in the past, so the numbers could undergo a revision. Nevertheless, they aren’t so shocking, just weak, so it certainly seems believable.
Can it challenge the low level of 0.7624 or even reach the 0.75 handle?
Here are 4 Factors Why Bearish AUD Trend Still In Place – Credit Suisse
Here is the recent fall on the chart:
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