The Australian dollar attempted to rally today following mixed employment data released in Australia. The currency failed to keep gains, though, and is now trading near opening levels against most major rivals.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that employment increased by 37,000 jobs in November, seasonally adjusted, exceeding the analysts’ median estimate of 20,000. Yet diving deeper into the report reveals that the data was not particularly good. The gain was the result of the increase in part-time jobs by 43,400, while full-time employment actually lost 6,400 jobs. On top of that, the October employment gain got a negative revision from 32,800 to 28,700.
Adding to the negative data, the unemployment rate rose from 5.0% to 5.1%. Analysts had expected it to stay unchanged.
On Wednesday, the Aussie, like most other currencies, logged sharp losses following the monetary policy announcement from the US Federal Reserve.
AUD/USD was little changed at 0.7105 as of 3:31 GMT today after rising to 0.7126 earlier. EUR/AUD opened at 1.6000, fell to the session low of 1.5972, but bounced to 1.6020 later. AUD/JPY inched down from 79.94 to 79.87, retreating from the daily high of 80.20.
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