While we have grown used to eye-poppingly 'odd' data from China (and increasingly the US), last night's surge in Aussie employment is among the greatest statistical pieces of muppetry we have ever seen. As Bloomberg reports, Australian employers added a record number of jobs in August - great news, right? Confirming CBA's decision to hold rates (not cut) and instantly AUD exploded higher. However, since then AUD has collapsed back to fresh 6-month lows plunging over 300 pips in 4 days. The reason - "the market's skeptical," says one trader, as Aussie's miracle jobs recovery was thanks to a 121,000 surge in part-time employees (equivalent to 1.3 million added in one month in the US).
See anything wrong with this chart?
Did Australia just become USA's smaller brother - adopting the 'any job is a good job' model of a part-time economy?
The market reacts...
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“The market’s skeptical,” said Sean Keane, an Auckland-based analyst at Triple T Consulting and the former head of Asia-Pacific rates trading at Credit Suisse Group AG. “Had today’s headline number been 41,000 rather than 121,000 it’s quite likely that the market would’ve been more believing in its response, and that interest-rate markets would’ve sold off even harder.”
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It seems everywhere in the world, 'managed' data is coming back to bite as the manipulation becomes too obvious.
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Of course - in America, the cognoscenti would simply dismiss it if it were a bad print "I don't believe it,"and sure enough the Aussies tonight are noting "the market, like ourselves, didn’t seem to believe the figures," as despite government denials, changes to the survey methodology in July seem to have massively distorted reality.
