Coronavirus: Unexpected drop in unemployment rate

BREAKING Unexpected drop in Australia’s jobless rate

Australia’s unemployment figure has shocked pundits by unexpectedly falling to 6.8 per cent as the economy roars back to life in the states that have managed to reopen the economy.

 

I hope the new jobs can replace the Job keeper payments and we come out slowly ok.

 

I just brought over 200k in USD back home. Thank god, with numbers like that the AUD is going to rocket even more than I already expected it to.

 

Once we open up back here in VIC and hopefully borders reopen creating a huge pent up demand for local travel giving a much needed tourism injection then those numbers will get much lower.

Obviously when job keeper stops then all these zombie businesses will go under and real numbers will be evident.

But the Melbourne lockdown and local tourism injections should greatly offset those.

 

Interesting.

Dumb question for me but just re: the mention of aud-usd currency consequence @jaybean , do you mean to say that because (on paper anyway.. ) our official unemployment rate is lowering/reducing; that that'll make our currency stronger against USD and not weaker? I.e. for the last week or two 1 AUD has bought roughly 0.72-0.73 USD.

Are you suggesting it claw up to 0.74-0.75 as a result of this news? And that's the reason why you are bringing BACK USD $200K because if it claws up to our favour; the inverse weakens meaning your USD $200K would buy you LESS AUD in a week or two time?

 

Despite more than 110,000 extra jobs, hours worked only rose 0.1 per cent last month. Majority of the jobs being created were part time.

 

I'm assuming when he said he brought back USD $200k, he had already converted it to AUD.

 

Yup that's the thinking. I was already bullish on the AUD as iron ore exports have unexpectedly exploded.

Plus the way we've managed this virus has been great relative to the rest of the world - I'm a big fan of Jobkeeper, for example. And then factor in all the hardening they've done to the banking sector, I expect the AUD to be very strong.

 

It helps when the labour force takes highly uncharacteristic falls at the same time...

Vic -0.9% and QLD -0.71%. Against a year ago, of the 5 major states only WA has a larger labour force at 0.33% growth.

Below numbers compare what unemployment would be if you used March 2020 labour force (right before Covid changes) with current employment numbers:

[State, actual Aug20, Aug20 using Mar20 labour force]

• NSW , 6.7% , 6.7%
• VIC , 7.1% , 10.4%
• QLD , 7.5% , 9.9%
• SA , 7.9% , 7.9%
• WA , 7.0% , 6.9%

I'd hazard a guess that this is a direct result of ongoing government stimulus and handouts taking people out of the labour force. Highly evident from this that Victoria is on a lifeline, and QLD is showing underlying weakness too. Other states seem to be relatively on their feet, particularly WA which is the only state to be in a fundamentally better position.

 

What a surprise. Two states with Labor government in charge.

 

Golden era is coming, even earlier than I anticipated .

 

I believe WA is also a Labor state is doing slightly better than the rest and that bastion of demonic socialists, the ACT is better than all of them (if I am comparing what I think are your figures to mine).

 

Have you seen Sydney & Melbourne numbers alone? I'm lead to believe Sydney is at 4%

 

The list of "completely unpredictable things that shouldn't happen but did happen during a worldwide pandemic" just keeps getting longer.....

 

Not for too much longer

 

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how the number of unemployed people is calculated? How is the data sourced and how reliable is it? Obviously those people on JobSeeker can be counted but what about others?

 

'What's the point?': Unemployment rate is soaring in Western Sydney

The surprising news is that youth unemployment in July 2020 in Sydney is lower than it was in October 2009.

 

If you have access to a bank account in the US and take a long term view, you can make quite a bit of money by effectively trading AUD/USD in this regard. I transferred quite a bit of money there and bought property in 2012 when we were around $1.05. It's positively geared so I always strike a balance between using the funds for travel when I'm there, or bringing it back when called for.

Given the pandemic, I brought some back recently at around $0.65 and also when it briefly tanked to $0.54 a few months ago. Both have paid off as effectively I could send it back now and start again with great profit on both transfers. It's a risk like anything, but we've always seen long term fluctuations in the pairing and it's a way to make money on the side, or have money for travel or other purchases in USD when needed.

 

I too took advantage of the dip a couple months back, on the inverse. I brought back into AUD some USD when it was at around 0.59 (so I think about 1.4-something on the inverse).

 

Great timing - would have been late March at almost the bottom, as 19/3 was the lowest close @ 0.5742.
Steady uptrend since then.

Can you give me some tattslotto numbers too?