The story of the RBA’s latest interest rates decision is that things may have changed, but not enough to bring an interest rate change onto the central bank’s agenda.

As expected, the RBA left the cash rate at its historic low of 2.5 per cent on Tuesday.

And it repeated its mantra, a key part of every interest rate announcement so far this year, that “the most prudent course is likely to be a period of stability in interest rates”.

This is despite two key events since the previous decision on September 2.

One was the release of figures by the Australian Bureau of Statistics soon after showing a massive jump in employment and a drop in the unemployment rate to 6.1 per cent in August from 6.4 per cent in July, both wholly unexpected.

The RBA acknowledged the figure, which economists have had great trouble explaining, saying only that labour market statistics “have been unusually volatile of late”.

But it stuck to its position that Australia is a fair way from anything that might look like full employment, and won’t be for a while.

“The Bank’s assessment remains that although some forward indicators of employment have been firming this year, the labour market has a degree of spare capacity and it will probably be some time yet before unemployment declines consistently,” the RBA said in the statement issued by its governor, Glenn Stevens, after the its board’s monthly meeting wound up.

The other key event was the drop in the Australian dollar.

At the time of the previous meeting it was holding steady above 93 US cents, near levels seen since mid-April.

Since then it has slipped back to as low as 86.5 US cents and was trading in a band around 87.5 as the board met.

But that did not change the RBA’s perspective either.

“The exchange rate has declined recently, in large part reflecting the strengthening US dollar, but remains high by historical standards, particularly given the further declines in key commodity prices in recent months,” the RBA said.

“It is offering less assistance than would normally be expected in achieving balanced growth in the economy.”

The RBA is not ignoring the Aussie dollar’s slide, but rather accepting that the slide has just not been particularly big.

Against the US dollar, the Aussie is currently down by six per cent compared with the average for the six months leading up to the previous board meeting.

Against the RBA’s trade-weighted average of currencies, the fall has been only a bit over three per cent.

So the RBA is right to behave as if not much has changed.