Job Prospects Down Slightly. Improving in Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland

ANZ Bank has published its July review of job ads in Australia’s major newspapers and on the internet.

Advertised Job Highlights

• Newspaper job ads averaged 8,162 per week, down from almost 16,000 12 months ago.
• Internet job ads averaged 117,046 per week, down from over 240,000 12 months ago.
• The total average number of weekly job ads in July was 125,207, down from 260,000 a year ago.
• Compared with June, newspaper job ads fell 0.4%, while internet job ads dropped by 1.8%..
• Job advertisements are showing tentative signs of stabilisation, which implies that business is no longer cutting back hiring intentions at the same pace.

Compared with June:

More Ads: Bucking the national trend, there were rises in the number of job ads in Tasmania (19.9%), Victoria (15.4%) and Queensland (4.6%).

Fewer Ads: New South Wales (14.8%) experienced the largest fall in job ads in percentage terms. ACT (5.4%), the Northern Territory (3.3%), South Australia (2.1%) and Western Australia (0.9%) also experienced falls in job ad numbers.

Commenting on the latest figures, ANZ Head of Australian Economics Warren Hogan, said:

“The data provides further evidence that demand for labour in the Australian economy is still wallowing at recessionary levels.

“So far, the difference between the current downturn and a recession however has been that weak demand for labour has not translated into widespread labour shedding, with most employers choosing to cut back on staff working hours rather than reducing overall headcount.

“Indeed, the main driver of increasing unemployment has been rapid growth in the labour force due to strong population growth and high levels of participation.

“Somewhat encouragingly however, the trend pace of decline in job ads has eased for the past five months, a tentative sign that job ads may soon stabilise and that businesses may stop cutting back on hiring intentions.

“This will unfortunately be insufficient to prevent job shedding in the near term, with employment expected to contract moderately through the remainder of 2009.

“ANZ expects employment to fall by 18,000 in July and the unemployment rate to rise to 6.1%.

“However we are increasingly optimistic that the pace of decline in employment will not be as severe as envisaged six months ago. Australian economic activity has been remarkably resilient in recent months, particularly for our largest employer, the retail sector.

“Furthermore, the recent rebound in business confidence and conditions suggests that employers may not be as pressed to cut back on labour (and investment) costs. We now expect the Australian unemployment rate to peak at around 7.5% in mid 2010.”