Jobs figures will be the major focus in Australian markets this week along with the updates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on household impacts and payroll jobs data.
The June labour force report (on Thursday) is forecast to show a 100,000 rebound in jobs after the loss of 835,000 jobs over the prior two months.
These will not be new jobs, just old jobs being filled again, probably by people who held them before the pandemic.
“This is consistent with an improvement in payroll jobs already reported by the ABS between mid-May and mid-June,” the AMP’s Dr. Shane Oliver said in his weekend note (The ABS showed a 1% rise based on the payroll figures).
However, Dr. Oliver says the unemployment rate may actually rise slightly to 7.5% as participation rises partly due to the return of the requirement to look for work in return for receiving JobSeeker.
The latest ABS household impacts of COVID survey (today) and payroll jobs data from the Tax Office (tomorrow) will be watched to see whether the jobs market has continued its slow recovery through the second half of June.
The worsening in Victoria didn’t really hit activity until very late in June.
Dr. Oliver says there could be a further improvement in business conditions and confidence in the June NAB business survey (tomorrow) because the survey was taken before the lockdowns started again in Melbourne and infection numbers surged.
But he says there could be a decline in the July reading of consumer confidence on the back of the resurgence of coronavirus in Australia and the lockdown of Melbourne.
