The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) may be one step closer to cutting interest rates soon due to economic news released yesterday.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is Australia’s central bank. One of its biggest roles is to decide Australia’s interest rate, taking into account economic conditions including unemployment, inflation and the housing market. The RBA interest rate has a ripple effect across the whole economy.
What Happened Yesterday?
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its monthly employment figures yesterdays, which is one of the measures that the RBA monitors closely.
The ABS said that employment increased by 34,700 people to 12,926,900 people. But this was made up of full time employment decreasing by 15,500 and part time employment increasing by 50,200.
Despite that, unemployment also increased by 4,100 to 716,800 people and which led to the unemployment rate increasing by (less than) 0.1% to 5.3%.
Unemployment rising is one of the most concerning things for the RBA because it’s people being employed that help them pay their mortgages, bills and fund the discretionary spending which makes the economy tick.
Low unemployment is important for Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), Westpac Banking Group (ASX: WBC), Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES), JB Hi-Fi Limited (ASX: JBH) and plenty of other potentially economically cyclical Australian businesses.
There was some good news for Australia’s economy though, the federal budget is almost back to $0 again, the deficit has almost been wiped out, with FY19 showing a $690 million deficit.
The RBA has been quick to reduce interest rates in recent months and yesterday’s decision by the US Federal Reserve to cut rates again probably means a cut next month is very likely.
With falling interest rates I’ve already written about some of the shares I’m interested in, but it’s going to make investing difficult, which is why I think the reliable shares in the free report below could be some of the best investment ideas.
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