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Posted: 2023-06-14 21:39:40

We've had a few questions about what this employment data could mean for interest rates.

Will the increase in employment last month increase the chances of the RBA lifting rates?

Well, according to this employment data, the trend unemployment rate has been sitting at 3.5 per cent since August last year, and now the participation rate and the employment-to-population ratio have hit fresh record highs.

Economists say the labour market has been showing some signs of weakening in recent months, but today's data show there's still a lot of momentum there.

Will this make the RBA nervous?

It depends on what the RBA thinks these job data mean for wage growth and inflation.

RBA governor Philip Lowe has said he would love to get inflation back down while keeping as many of these (post-lockdown) employment gains in place as possible.

But he doesn't want wage growth to start feeding into higher inflation, which then feeds into higher wages growth, and so on.

For months now, he's said there's still a "narrow path" open for the RBA to bring inflation down without unemployment increasing too much.

And it really wants to stick that landing.

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But some economists say these data will see the RBA lifting rates again.

Former RBA economist Callam Pickering says we should probably brace ourselves for that to happen.

“The Australian labour market remains incredibly strong and given the high number of job vacancies nationwide, that isn’t likely to change in the near-term," he says.

“Australia’s labour market was breaking records left-and-right last year and, despite the challenges of high inflation and rising interest rates, not a lot has changed so far this year. There has been no meaningful moderation in labour market conditions.”

However, Mr Pickering does note something important.

He says the level of underemployment actually increased last month, from 6.1% to 6.4%, and that pushed the underutilisation rate up to 10% for the first time since April last year.

So that suggests lots of people are still working, but the number of people who aren't getting the hours they'd like has increased noticeably.

And that shows the level of labour market 'slack' could be increasing in ways that the headline figure hasn't captured.

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