More Jobs for Australia

The Australian ANZ Job Advertisements Series showed the total number of jobs advertised in major newspapers and on the internet rose by 5.2% in November. This follows a fall of 1.7% in October. Total job advertisements are now 12.3% higher than the cyclical trough recorded in July 2009, but they remain 34.2% lower than in November 2008.

Newspaper job advertisements
The number of job advertisements in major newspapers increased by 8.3% in November to an average of 9,530 per week. This follows a 1.4% fall in October. Newspaper job advertisements are 18.7% lower than a year ago. In trend terms, the number of newspaper job advertisements grew by 2.3% in November, their sixth consecutive month of trend growth. The biggest increase in newspaper job advertisements in November was in WA (+18.4%), followed by VIC (+14.0%), the NT (+10.5%), the ACT (+10.3%), SA (+7.2%), NSW (+6.0%) and TAS (+0.8%). QLD was the only state to experience a fall in newspaper job advertisements this month (-4.4%).

Internet job advertisements
The number of internet job advertisements rose by 5.0% but they remained 35.1% lower than 12 months earlier. In trend terms, internet job advertisements rose by 1.5% in November but are still 36.6% lower than in November 2008 in trend terms.

ANZ Acting Chief Economist Warren Hogan, said:

• Total job advertisements are now well past their trough point, with four months of trend growth recorded since July. The 8.3% lift in newspaper job advertising in November is particularly encouraging, given that this sector tends to ‘lead’ overall job advertising trends. Eventually the improvement in job advertising will translate into higher employment growth. The recent strength in job advertising is consistent with the positive trends seen in many other indicators across the Australian economy. Taken together, these data imply that Australia’s recovery from the recent downturn is gathering pace.
• Employment growth is also now trending upwards, after contracting through the first half of 2009. The unemployment rate appears to have stabilised in the high ‘fives’. This is good news for households and businesses alike, but net jobs growth remains weak by historical standards, with considerable volatility in recent monthly jobs growth.
• Also, all of the net job additions have been in part-time not full-time jobs (full-time jobs have fallen by 10.4k and part-time jobs have grown by 85.5k since June) and total hours worked has only recently stabilised (in trend terms). This indicates that the net addition in headcount in recent months is telling us only part of the labour market story, with actual demand still proving to be soft.
• In the near term, we expect weak employment growth over the summer months. If total hours worked picks up pace, then more of these jobs will be full-time. But even with this jobs growth, continuing labour force growth will still see a further increase in the national unemployment rate, probably to around 6.5% in mid-2010.
• The November Labour Force report, due on Thursday, is likely to confirm this expectation. ANZ is expecting a small increase in net employment of 5,000 in the month. The unemployment rate is expected to rise from 5.8% to 5.9%.
• This month saw a net increase in newspaper job ads in all states except Queensland, which is showing the weakest recovery in job ads of all states and territories. Queensland’s newspaper job ads series has fallen further in the past 3 months and is 38% lower than last year. The other big mining boom state, WA, recorded strong jobs ads growth this month, but remained 27.9% lower than last year. In terms of job ads recovery, South Australia and Tasmania are still outperforming other states.