RBA's Heath: Australian economy still has spare capacity, RBA needs to improve measurement

The Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) Alexandra Heath is hitting wires with comments regarding the state of things within the Australian economy in regards to unemployment. Heath is the head of economic analysis at the RBA.

Key highlights

The unemployment rate is still the RBA's main measure of economic spare capacity.

The labour market is definitely more complex than textbooks suggest.

There's still more work that has to be done to refine how we measure spare capacity.

RBA needs to improve its ability to forecast wage growth.

An increase in the availability of flexible work arrangements has affected spare capacity.

Underemployed, marginally-attached workers continue to add to spare capacity issues.