Australia | Oct 09 2006
By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck
Labour market conditions in Australia are likely to remain tight, but unlikely to tighten further in the near future. This is one conclusion drawn by Tony Pearson, Head of Australian Economics at ANZ following the release of the bank’s monthly update on job advertisements in Australia.
According to this morning’s September update, the total number of jobs advertised in major metropolitan newspapers and on the internet rose by 0.3% in September to an average of 184,563 per week. The result follows a 1.3% fall in August. ANZ notes the total number of advertisements in September was 20.4% higher than a year ago.
However, the update also reveals a rather nasty trend for publishers of metropolitan newspapers in Australia: it is the internet that keeps on growing while their newspaper market share keeps on falling. ANZ reports the number of job ads in newspapers has now fallen to a five month low. Newspaper advertisements in September were 4.6% lower than in September 2005.
ANZ reports the number of job advertisements in major metropolitan newspapers fell by 0.2% in September to an average of 19,770 per week. This follows a 0.6% decline in August.
Abstracting from month-to-month volatility in the data, the bank’s economists state trend data show that newspaper job advertisements in major metropolitan newspapers have been declining almost continuously since the end of 2004.
Meanwhile the good news story regarding the number of internet job advertisements continues with the September data revealing an increase by 0.3% to average 164,793 per week. ANZ notes however that the trend rate of growth of internet job advertisements has been slowing since the end of 2005 to reach only 0.5% in September.
All this leads ANZ to conclude a cooling in employment growth is likely to continue in the second half of 2006 (see opening paragraph of this story).