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September job ads continue upward trend

Total job advertisements grew by 4.4 percent in September on the back of an August rise of 4.1 percent

October 5, 2009

Total job advertisements in newspapers and on the internet grew by 4.4 percent in September on the back of an August rise of 4.1 percent, according to ANZ.

The bank’s monthly job advertisement series released today reveals newspaper jobs increased by 3.7 percent while internet job ads grew by 4.5 percent.

It appears total job advertisements have finally bottomed-out, and are now heading up, albeit from very low levels.

The number of job ads still remain 44.9 percent lower than this time last year.

However, September figures have brought promising news to job seekers, with the number of newspaper job ads rising to an average of 8,929 per week and internet job ads improving to 127,141 per week.

While national averages are improving, Queensland suffered a loss in newspaper job ads over the month, slipping by 0.3 percent.

ANZ Acting Chief Executive Warren Hogan says this latest data is the best evidence to date that the labour market is entering an early recovery phase.

“So far in this downturn, the Australian labour market has been characterised by cuts to hours that have meant fewer cuts to employment, and resulted in rising underemployment rather than rising unemployment. 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,” Hogan explains.

“Once the recovery commences, this process is likely to slowly reverse, with working hours for existing employees creeping up again before total employment numbers begin to grow. It may therefore take some time to see sustained net job growth again, even after indicators such as job ads turn up,” he says.

In the near term, ANZ expects to see further deterioration in the labour market due to the very low level of demand for new labour, continuing job shedding and strong growth in labour supply.

“Despite today’s improvement in the ANZ job ads series, we still expect employment to fall by about 20,000 in September (a fall of 0.2 percent from last month) and the unemployment rate to rise above 6 percent, when the ABS releases its labour force numbers for September this Thursday,” Hogan says.

“Looking further ahead, today’s numbers confirm our expectation 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 in some of our largest employing industries such as retail trade, health services, government and construction,” he says.

ANZ expects the Australian unemployment rate to peak at around 7.25 percent in mid 2010.

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