Thursday, April 07, 2011

Australian Job Growth Returns

After a temporary setback following the recent floodings, job growth returned in Australia, with 37,800 new jobs, (the equivalent of about 500,000 in America), pushing the unemployment rate down to 4.9%.

As I have stated before, this boom will likely continue as long as commodity prices remain at a high level.

Following the news, the Australian dollar rose to a new high of US$ 1.048.  This reflects in part general U.S. dollar weakness, but also that the news means that the probability of more interest rate increase by the Reserve bank of Australia.