October job ads post six consecutive months of growth as reports project moderate job expansion
A new report suggests that online and print advertisements of available jobs in Australia surged anew in October. But the same report warned that only firm growth should be expected in the medium term.
Commissioned by the Australia & New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), the report showed that the country's October job advertisement inched up by 0.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted average of 179,040 each week.
ANZ said on Monday that the new figures showed that total job ads consistently spiked for the past six months, where in September both newspaper and internet employment hiring recruitments registered an upwardly revised jump of 1.1 percent.
The ANZ report said that the data is in line with the October employment report set to be released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on November 11, which is projected to reflect a moderate job growth of 15,000.
In spite of the upward surge seen in employment growth in the past few months, the ANZ survey showed that available jobs would only expand moderately, a projection it asserted is backed by "statistical analysis combined with recent trends in business surveys and in the economy's largest industries."
The job ads climb so far has chalked up numbers that were far better than posted from the previous year, which is up to 34.6 percent higher, though the data still fell short of the record 40.2 percent increase recorded in May 2007.
The survey also highlighted the fact that job ads still behind by 35.6 percent from the record high registered in April 2008 as it underscored that leading dailies circulated in Australian metropolis saw their job ads shrunk by 0.3 percent in October.
The report attributed the creeping decline, the fifth in seven months, to the growing swing of job advertising to online platforms specifically in Queensland and South Australia though the ANZ study noted that printed job ads are growing on annual terms in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and the two territories, with WA posting a year-on-year growth of 50.9 percent.
Once the ABS releases its new job figures on Thursday, analysts were projecting that unemployment rate should be 5.0 percent, which is an improvement from the previous month's median market forecast of 5.1 percent.