January unemployment rate up from 3.9% to 4.1%
Worse than expected job figures could increase the likelihood of interest rate cuts this year according to economists. The unemployment rate reached 4.1 per cent in January up from 3.9 per cent in December. It's estimated just 500 jobs were created last month.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 I think these are largely consistent with the expectations of the Treasury and as I
00:07 understand it the Reserve Bank and others.
00:10 Nobody likes to see the unemployment rate tick up but it's still very low by historic
00:16 standards and it's consistent with an economy which is softening.
00:21 And we've made it clear now in a couple of budget updates that we expect the economy
00:26 to slow in the course of 2024.
00:29 That's what happens when you've got interest rate rises working their way through the system,
00:34 when you've got persistent inflation and when you've got global economic uncertainty which
00:38 is characterised as you know by concerns over China and obviously two major conflicts as
00:44 well.
00:45 So for all of those reasons we have expected for some time the labour market to soften
00:49 as part of the economy slowing more broadly and that's what we see in today's figures.
00:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]