Signs mainland Chinese house buyers are back in Sydney

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Friday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.</p><p>I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz.</p><p>And today we lead with news mainland Chinese buyers are again very active in Sydney's new housing markets.</p><p>But first, there were just under 220,000 US <a href="https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/newsreleases/ui-claims/20230926.pdf" target="_blank"><strong>jobless claims</strong></a> last week which was not as big a fall as was expected. (The seasonally adjusted number was higher.) There are now just under 1.7 mln people of these assistance programs.</p><p>All eyes are now on non-farm payrolls, and it is expect these will have risen only a modest +180,000 in April when the data is released tomorrow morning. The number of <a href="https://www.challengergray.com/blog/april-2023-job-cuts-fall-to-lowest-point-of-the-year-up-176-over-same-month-last-year-ytd-up-322-hiring-down-81-ytd/" target="_blank"><strong>layoffs</strong></a> in April came in at their lowest level of the year.</p><p>And the American <a href="https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/ft900.pdf" target="_blank"><strong>trade deficit</strong></a> came in at its lowest in four months, and it’s second lowest since November 2020. Exports rose +2.1%, imports fell marginally.</p><p>Canada's widely-watched <a href="https://iveypmi.uwo.ca/" target="_blank"><strong>Ivey PMI</strong></a> slipped slightly by is still expanding at a very solid rate.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/7e8810a9a4d946edb9598772c75d9701" target="_blank"><strong>Caixin China General Manufacturing PMI fell</strong></a> to a small contraction in April which mirrored the official PMI contraction. But analysts had expected the Caixin PMI to be a bit better than that. It was not to be. The latest result was the first contraction in factory activity since January, amid an ongoing property d