Forex Marketz Daily Forex News – Fully Markets Update
Today is a fairly quiet day on the Asian region economic calendar. This morning, the Australian dollar, including the benchmark AUD/USD Forex market, moved lower after the Down Under released its labor report for January. The weakness with the Australian dollar is thanks to, in part, to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s commitment not to change its monetary policy anytime soon.
The Australian labor report showed that their economy added a net 16,000 jobs in the month of January. This was better than the 15,000 expected. Also the unemployment rate ticked lower to 5.5 percent. This was expected and below the December unemployment level of 5.6 percent.
Looking deeper into the labor report, investors are noting that part time category positions were up by 65,900. That was the largest gain, for this sector, since July 2016. However, these gains were offset by full time losses. Full time jobs fell by 49.8k. Also, and most importantly, the labor force participation rate was down to 65.6 percent. This was as expected.
Australian Dollar Traders watch the Reserve Bank of Australia
Traders viewed this labor report as a bit underwhelming. Looking at the countries 2 year government bond yields, they fell after the labor data was released. This is because traders know that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is not going to change monetary policy or interest rates anytime soon.
The labor data has little influence on the bank’s short term monetary policy stance. Also, the RBA is not looking to change and has said that they are in no rush to change its policy.
