Australia’s unemployment rate stayed flat at 5.8 per cent, with 4,800 jobs lost from the local economy.
Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to stay flat at 5.8 per cent, with 10,000 jobs added.
Full-time positions rose by 22,000, but part-time jobs fell 27,000, the Australian Bureau of Statistics published on Thursday.
The participation rate fell marginally to 64.6 per cent, from 64.7 per cent and aggregate month hours worked decreased 2.1 million, or 0.1 per cent, to 1588.6 million hours.
The Australian dollar eased slightly at 93.75 US cents.
”The Australian dollar has recently taken a turn towards more global factors. We’ve been seeing pretty sustained weakness in commodity prices and the Aussie dollar hasn’t really responded to that,” JPMorgan economist Ben Jarman said.
”If we’re in a world of relatively low volatility then the currencies that are very well supported by that are the ones that are relatively high absolute yield and rate levels, and that’s Australia.”
State-by-state
NSW’s jobless rate increased to a seasonally adjusted 5.7 per cent in May, from 5.4 per cent in April, while Victoria’s unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 6.2 per cent.
Unemployed in both Queensland and Tasmania slipped 0.1 percentage points to 6.2 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively.
South Australia recorded the largest increased in its jobless rate, pushing up to 6.8 per cent in May, from 6.2 per cent in April. Western Australia’s unemployment rate crept up 0.1 percentage points to 5 per cent.
source: theage.com.au
