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Can Australia keep employing its people?

Today Australia released unemployment report that showed further improvement took place in May.

  • Full time employment rose by 147,000 and part time employment rose by 273,000, which pushed unemployment rate lower to 6.1% as participation rate remained same at 64.7%.

This is sure a welcoming news for ailing economy, however doubts remain whether how further can the economy employ its people with headwinds facing from commodity sector bust and ailing Chinese economy.

The above chart shows total number of males and females looking for full time work, which is hovering well above 2008/09 crisis high, suggesting Australia is facing greater challenge to tackle Chinese economic slowdown in 2013/15, than US housing bust of 2008/09.

  • Unemployment rate among males, who are looking for full time work is hovering at 5.7% far above from its pre-crisis bottom at 3.5%.
  • Unemployment rate among females, looking for full time work, are far worse at 6.8% compared to 4.6% in early 2008.

Australia is simply not employing its ladies. While overall participation rate has gone down, participation among females have gone up from 56% in 2005 to 58.6% as of May 2015.

Economy is adding more part time workers than full time.

Though Australian economy showing some signs of turn around along with Global economy, rate of recovery is much slower. It can even take another turn for the worse if Chinese economy deteriorates sharply, which it seem to be doing in 2015.

Reserve bank of Australia's (RBA) Governor Mr. Stevens rightly said too much is being expected from monetary policy alone.

But Sorry to disappoint Mr. Stevens with Government trying to manage fiscal imbalance monetary policy will have to do the trick with further stimulus and verbal intervention to weaken Aussie, especially against Asian counterparts.

Aussie which is currently trading at 0.773 against dollar, need to be pushed lower to balance the headwinds facing.

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