The Queensland floods notwithstanding, job availabilities flashed in newspapers and online ads surged in the month of January, according to the latest ANZ Job Advertisements Series survey published on Monday.

The new survey said that overall available jobs published on major metropolitan dailies and internet job sites improved by 2.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted average of 2.0 percent in the month, which is also the 12th consecutive month that the job ads spikes were seen and coming from the downward revised increase of 1.23 percent in December.

The figures, according to ANZ head of Australian Economics and Property Research Ivan Colhoun, was a boost for the country's labour market amidst the disaster that had hit in January and pointed to encouraging signs that "Australian labour demand remained reasonably solid in the latter months of 2010 in spite of some patchiness in a number of sectors of the economy."

Calhoun added in his statement that job advertising in Queensland saw a decline in the two weeks approaching the mid-part of January but the numbers climbed anew in the following weeks, leaving him to surmise that "February data will likely provide a clearer picture of the extent to which advertising in Queensland continues to be affected due to flooding."

The ANZ economist said that the final January job ads would likely be adjusted by at least one percent higher the moment the February results are made known next month.

For now, the latest data showed that published available job ads in January dipped by 0.1 percent for major newspapers as against to the 4.7 percent posted in the previous month but 6.4 percent lower when compared to results recorded in the same month last year.

However, if flood factors were factored in, printed job ads probably spiked by 0.6 percent in the month yet retreated by 5.7 percent from the numbers seen in the same period last year.

The consistent decline of print advertising could be attributed to the rising migration of job ads to online advertisements, the survey said, as it showed that web-based job announcements jumped by 2.5 percent at the start of the current year and coming from the 1.5 percent growth seen from the December results.

ANZ said that the latest results represented online job ads soars of up to 44.1 percent from the past 12 months though it noted that if the impact of the Queensland floods were to be considered, the January numbers would have shown climbs of up to 3.2 percent in the month.