September quarter QES and LCI – what happened?

I do not know what happened, as I am writing this post several days before the results came out.

Key statistics for me are:

Hours worked: How much did they decline? This is the “labour input” in its entirety – if domestic activity is declining this will tell us.
Retail/construction/wholesale/business and property services employment: These sections of the labour market should be getting hammered – are they?
Hours x average hourly pay: How is nominal household income growing? If this slows sharply then we should start to be concerned
Adjusted labour cost index: This is an indication of true, fundamental, inflationary pressure – I suspect that quarterly growth will be over 1% (given that September is typically strong for wage claims), however market expectations are lower. A result under 0.5% for the quarter is weak – and suggests that slowing economic activity is taking down inflationary pressures.

Give me a run down so I can read it in a couple of weeks 😉