Encouraging but hardly boom times


Market economists just love to use the boom and gloom words. They both give them the opportunity to forecast interest rate movements and it is volatility that provides their financial institutions with the opportunity to clip more tickets and transfer funds from clients to annual bonuses.
So it is this morning with the release of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing a modest improvement in the number of Australians out of work. “Australian employers added workers in August for the 11th time in 12 months, underscoring the central bank’s view that a jobs boom will help stoke an economic expansion in coming quarters,” reported the financial news service Bloomberg.
In fact the unemployment rate for August has come in at 5.1%, which is 0.2 points lower than in July although half of that decline is accounted for by a 0.1 point drop in the participation rate. That’s hardly a staggering decline and in the past year the drop in the unemployment rate is 0.7 points. At this rate it will be many more months before unemployment gets back to the 4% level of February 2008.
9-09-2010 employmentinaugust

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