I posted on the revisions to the job data here:
Forget everything you thought you knew about Australian employment
and
Australian Bureau of Statistics to change seasonal adjustment of monthly labour force estimates
OK, from Westpac:
- If the ABS turns the seasonal factors off for July, Aug and Sep then given no other changes by the ABS (something we can’t guarantee) we estimate the following revisions to the estimate for total employment.
- July will be revised from –4.1k to +3.5k
- Aug will be revised from +121.0k to +32.1k
- The revisions also take the annual pace of employment growth down from an unbelievable 2.2%yr to a more respectable 1.5%yr which is more in line with Westpac’s Jobs Index
- From this starting point we clearly can’t hold to our current forecast for a minus 70k print on total employment for the Sep survey. That forecast was based on the observation that seasonality had changed and as the seasonal factors had not been changed, this would have induced a significant correction in the following month. We are now forecasting a rise of +25k for Sep which will hold the annual rate flat at 1.6%yr.
