Australia's unemployment rate firmed up to a two-year low of five percent in January basing on the latest labour data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Thursday, which also showed that some 24,000 additional jobs were spawned by the economy in the month.

Economists said that the new figures were mostly in line with their projections and the new employment slots seen in the month exceeded by up to 17,500 more from earlier predictions.

While the latest job data revealed that about 8000 full-time jobs were lost in the month, these declines were effectively absorbed by the 32,000 part-time jobs that were provided in January, though the overall number of hours chalked up by workers for the entire period dipped by 12.7 million.

As expected, the economic effects of the recent floods were seen as main culprit in the retreats seen, with JP Morgan chief economist Stephen Walters providing his observation that the slide in the number of hours worked in the month "is probably an indication of some of the flood impact, that people couldn't work as many hours as they would have liked."

Walters noted though that the numbers produced in the month were firm enough as the ABS data pointed to the increasing figures of participation rate, which moved up a bit to 65.9 percent that effectively signals the spiking number of people hunting for work.

RBC Capital Markets senior economist Su Lin Ong told ABC that the new job data is akin enough to the central bank's tightening measures and with the labour market possibly inching closer to near-capacity employment, rate hikes can only be expected probably in the second quarter and another one before the year ends.

Also, the ABS noted that due to the flooding that affected much of Queensland, data from the state was subjected to an increase weighing response in order to match the national population benchmarks, which led to he jobless rate in the area sliding by 5.6 percent in January.