The Australian Department of Employment and Workplace Relations have announced that its leading indicator of employment fell to -0.579 in April from -0.336 in March which makes it the 16th consecutive monthly decline. This seems to confirm fears that the pace of long term employment growth will slip below its long term average of 2.3% pa.
The ABS are due to release March employment data tomorrow with market consensus looking for a fall of 24.8K jobs and a corresponding increase in the unemployment rate from 5.2% to 5.4%.
