AUDUSD remains under pressure on Thursday; the statistics threw a curve.
The Australian Dollar is weak against the USD on Thursday afternoon. The current quote for the instrument is 0.6445.
The statistics published by Australia earlier today showed that the employment market couldn’t evade the problem related to a slowdown in the country’s economy and quarantine restrictions forced by the Covid-19 pandemic. In April, the Unemployment Rate increased up to 6.2% after being 5.2% in the previous month. Market expectations were 8.3%, that’s why the actual reading may be considered more or less neutral. However, the signal isn’t looking very optimistic.
The Employment Change was -594.3K in April after being 0.7K in March and against the expected reading of -575K.
On one hand, it’s quite logical that under the current unstable circumstances, businesses prefer to cut expenses and start firing their staff.
On the other hand, the Australian labor market has been balanced for the last eight years, when the country’s economy was switching from a commodity-based model to a diversified one. At the moment, there is not much room for maneuver left, that’s why it will be very difficult to employ such a great number of unemployed personnel.