The Australian November Employment data is here

  • I posted Westpac's analysis here
  • And Australian November jobs reports blockbuster - more analyst responses

More now:

CBA:

  • There will be many doubters over the accuracy of the ABS series, but a trend improvement in the jobs data does correspond with the leading indicators like the business and vacancies surveys
  • It is unusual to have two strong consecutive rises. But it has happened regularly in the past when the labour market turns
  • The economy is restructuring and rebalancing, which involves ongoing highly publicised job losses. But there are also job gains underway. And they are advertised. That is why the job vacancies series have been rising steadily over the past year
  • The bond markets might not like it but there is solid jobs growth occurring and, most probably, the unemployment rate peaked in early 2015.

ANZ:

  • Measured jobs growth of 3% y/y looks to have run noticeably ahead of the signal from other labour market indicators
  • The modest improvement in the unemployment rate, however, appears to be broadly consistent with the improving trend in job ads which have been indicating a risk of a lower unemployment rate for some time
  • Overall labour underutilisation, however, remains substantial despite some improvement
  • Clearly the RBA will be happy with the improvement in labour market conditions, even after heavily discounting the recent strength in the official figures. Nevertheless, we stand by our call for 50bps of cash rate cuts next year.

NAB:

  • Almost certainly employment growth has not been this strong
  • Excluding sample rotation, jobs growth was a more modest 5,300 in the month
  • The RBA ... likely to interpret the jobs figures through the lens of the past couple of months. On this basis, the unemployment rate has trended lower, and is sitting well below where they had forecast at the beginning of November
  • NAB continues to expect the RBA to remain on hold for an extended period, before modest rate increases from mid-2017

Chris Caton, BT Financial Group:

  • The second humongous rise in employment and the second successive fall in unemployment should effectively rout all those calling for further rate cuts. Some will question the veracity of the data, of course. They always do.
  • Yet another puzzling employment report, exhibiting strength that few are prepared to accept at face value. Nevertheless, it can't be discounted completely. Until there is clear evidence to the contrary, the case for a further rate cut has evaporated.

UBS

  • November's labour report delivered a near record high growth in jobs
  • This overstates the 'true' improvement, with the trend in the pace of the matched sample broadly consistent with 2% y/y jobs growth (20,000 pm over 4 months) - which is in line with the leading jobs indicators - rather than the reported 3% pace
  • That said, this is still fast enough to suggest the peak in the unemployment rate has already passed, consistent with our view the RBA will remain on hold over the next year.

Paul Bloxham, HSBC

  • general trends are positive and support the RBA's current stance of waiting and watching
  • We have an RBA cut pencilled in for Q1 2016, but acknowledge that if the much stronger labour market numbers prove to be a sustained and statistically robust trend, further cuts would be unlikely.

Via Business Insider