Countering previous market forecasts, the unemployment rate in Australia inched up a bit in October, which economists said should be read by the country's central bank as a sign that no further rate hikes in the few months to come would be required.

According to the fresh data furnished by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the number of jobless in the country increased to 5.4 percent in October, this despite the addition of 29,700 more jobs in the month.

Analysts said that the separating indicators were largely due to the high number of Australians competing for the available job slots, effectively surging the participation rate to a record 65.9 percent in October, giving more reason for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to keep the cash rate from moving upward in December.

The new ABS job figures also showed that full time employment shrunk by 14,100 in October, notwithstanding the emergence of more available jobs for the eighth straight months, which many economists said was pointing to solid indication that the economy is sitting on a solid ground.

Following the news of rising unemployment, the Australian roller-coastered before settling down in a bit lesser value against the US dollar, at least before the country's job data was made public on Thursday.

With more spare capacity on the table, economists said that the RBA would be more comfortable to forego its next policy rate hike for the second quarter of 2011 as ANZ Bank analyst Riki Polygenis appeared impressed by the fact that the Australian economy was able to generate almost half-a-million jobs since the third quarter of 2009.

Now on its highest level since the latter part of 2008, the RBA's current cash rate should not move up until the second half of 2011 thanks mostly to the underlying strength of the economy as analysts maintained that while the rise in the jobless rate came as a surprise, the strength of the labour market and the economy in general were merely hidden in a mist, which should disappear very soon.

And it seems that the RBA is being peppered with more good news as the latest Melbourne Institute survey on inflationary forecasts showed significant improvement in November, chalking up 3.1 percent in the month from the 3.8 percent posted in October and signifying that Australian consumers were less worried of increasing cost pressures.