— Bruce Hockman, ABS Macroeconomic Statistics Division
The Australian unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly last month as companies created more new jobs. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on Thursday that companies added 37.4K new jobs to the economy in April, following a downwardly revised gain of 60K in the previous month and surpassing forecasts for an increase of 5,000 jobs. However, they were all part-time, while full-time employment lost 11.6K jobs in the reported month. Thus, the unemployment rate fell to 5.7% in April, whereas analysts expected the jobless rate to remain unchanged at 5.9%. The number of people looking for a full-time job dropped 12.3K to 514.2K, whereas the number of people looking for a part-time job fell 6,8000 to 218,000. Moreover, the participation rate remained unchanged at 64.8% in April, beating expectations for a decrease to 64.7%. Other data released by the Melbourne Institute showed that consumer inflation would probably climb 4.0% year-over-year in May, following the prior month's 4.1%. Back in the Q1 of 2017, the Bureau Statistics reported that its CPI advanced 2.1% on an annual basis.
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