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Speaker 1: Heather Duplessy Allen make it twelve past five. The unemployment

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Speaker 1: rate has risen to five point two percent now. That

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Speaker 1: is the highest rate since late twenty twenty. Not as

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Speaker 1: bad as expected though, we were picking five point three.

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Speaker 1: Michael Gordon is Westpac senior economist and with us, Hey, Michael,

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Speaker 1: do you reckon this is the worst we're going to

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Speaker 1: see or are we going to go further from here?

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Speaker 2: I think we're getting near the end, not necessarily there yet.

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Speaker 2: This has really been, I guess, a continuation of the

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Speaker 2: slowdown in the economy that's been running for a couple

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Speaker 2: of years now, and we don't know that was really

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Speaker 2: not not unsurprising given that we had the Reserve Bank

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Speaker 2: raising interest rates to try and bring inflation under control.

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Speaker 2: So we're just seeing this very delayed impact that's still

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Speaker 2: coming through in the jobs market. I think we are

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Speaker 2: getting towards the end. We have seen economic activity picking up,

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Speaker 2: but it's just not coming through in terms of businesses

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Speaker 2: need to hire just yet.

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Speaker 1: Are we being saved by the underutilization rate here?

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Speaker 2: Really the underutilization rates a broader measure, and therefore you

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Speaker 2: end up with the higher number. Some people do like

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Speaker 2: to pick it out because it is a higher number,

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Speaker 2: but when it comes down to it, it is telling

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Speaker 2: us much the same story as the unemployment rate itself.

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Speaker 2: They're both back to around where they were in twenty sixteen.

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Speaker 1: Now, what do you expect we're going to get it

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Speaker 1: as a result of this, with the Reserve Bank still

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Speaker 1: seeing a cut.

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Speaker 2: Well, this looked to be pretty much right on what

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Speaker 2: they were expecting, so I don't think it's new information

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Speaker 2: for them. So I think really coming back to what

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Speaker 2: their existing thinking was, and I think the sense from

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Speaker 2: their last statement was that they were looking at a

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Speaker 2: cut probably in August. Some of them wanted to last time,

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Speaker 2: wanted to wait and see how the inflation numbers and

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Speaker 2: so on turned out. But I think it's a pretty

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Speaker 2: strong expectation we'll get another cut this time. What they

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Speaker 2: signal beyond that, I think it'd be more interesting. Do

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Speaker 2: they signal that there's a strong chance of another cut

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Speaker 2: or two by the end of the or they just

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Speaker 2: leave that deer as an option.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, good stuff, Michael, Thanks very much, Michael Gordon WISPAC

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Speaker 1: Senior Economists. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen

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