The Australian dollar gained today even though employment data missed forecasts and the inflation expectations gauge decreased this month.
The report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that the number of employed people increased by just 3,700 in October from September. That was far below the forecast value of 17,800 and the previous month’s revised growth by 26,600. Yet on the positive note, the increase was the result of growing full-time employment, which offset the drop in part-time employment. Additionally, the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell from 5.5% to 5.4%, touching the lowest level since February 2013.
Economists argued that the big problem for the Australian economy remains the fact that growth of employment is not followed by wage and inflation growth. And indeed, inflationary expectations reported by the Melbourne Institute fell from 4.3% in October to 3.7% in November.
AUD/USD traded little changed at 0.7594 as of 11:15 GMT today. At the same time, EUR/AUD dropped from 1.5532 to 1.5394. AUD/JPY rose from 85.64 to 85.97, bouncing from the daily low of 85.44, which was the lowest since August 11.
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