Events that marked the week:
Focus of the morning part of Tuesday's session was on RBA Meeting Minutes. In the minutes of the central bank's March board meeting, released on Tuesday, members acknowledged that employment growth stalled in January following a surge in late 2015, while unemployment climbed back up to six per cent. "Nevertheless, conditions in the labour market had clearly improved since early 2015," the RBA said.
"Leading indicators of employment had increased further and were consistent with employment growth in the months ahead." But the central bank said low
inflation will allow it to cut the cash rate if jobs growth flattens out or the global economy goes into meltdown. "
Continued low inflation would provide scope to ease policy further, should that be appropriate to lend support to demand," the minutes said.
Thursday's session was marked by Australian job figures. Australia's unemployment rate fell from 6 to 5.8% in February because a large number of people gave up looking for work. The Bureau of Statistics estimated that only 300 jobs were added in February, but unemployment still fell because the participation rate dropped. The typical economist forecast in a survey by Bloomberg was for 13,500 jobs to have been created and unemployment to remain steady at 6%. Seasonally adjusted figures point to a 0.2-percentage-point fall in the proportion of the adult population in work or actively looking for it.
This week markets will be looking at:
HPI (Tuesday 2:30)
