The Reserve Bank of Australia March meeting minutes are here:
RBA March meeting minutes: Rising AUD would complicate economic transition
And more here:
RBA highlights threats in property market, acceleration of domestic household debt
And the sliding AUD:
Given the continued sell off in the Australian dollar I am revisiting the Minutes. There isn't anything else fresh or new from Australia today, so maybe there is a smoking gun somewhere in these.
I'm going with this, the discussion in them on the labour market (in brief, bolding mine):
- Employment growth had picked up in recent months ... And the unemployment rate had edged down to 5.7 per cent in January
(And, interrupting here, in the most recent data, which came out 2 weeks or so after the meeting, the u/e rate is higher.
OK, back to the Minutes:)
- Employment growth had continued to be concentrated in part-time jobs over the past year and wage growth had remained low, suggesting that the labour market had not been quite as strong as the headline employment and unemployment rate figures had indicated
- Subdued wage growth appeared to have been broad based
- Average earnings per hour in the national accounts had fallen sharply in the December quarter, as had the wage bill as a share of nominal GDP. Although quarterly movements in average earnings per hour are volatile, this measure of wage growth had also been subdued in year-ended terms
The key concern at the bank on slow wage growth (and combined with high debt load) is the impact this is having on household spending, i.e. weighing on it and contributing to a slow economy
This is downbeat stuff form the RBA.
A key constraint on the Bank is the continued surging of east-coast (especially in the two major cities of Sydney and Melbourne) house prices. Further attempts at controlling the surge (perhaps through macro-prudential tools - for example tighter lending standard on borrowers) appear to me would prompt the RBA slipping back into an easing mode.
