Australia's 5.2 per cent unemployment rate for December 2011 could grow further based on survey results that majority of top listed Aussie firms have no plans to hire new workers in the next 12 months.

According to the latest quarterly Deloitte CFO Survey, 84 per cent of chief financial officers (CFO) foresee manpower numbers declining or remaining unchanged for 2012. The exception to such a bleak outlook are certain industries particularly those in the still lucrative resources sector.

"Generally, across the board, the attitude to hiring is that the majority are saying that that's not in their plans at the moment," Deloitte Chief Operating Officer Keith Skinner said.

Over one third of the CFOs included in the survey attributed the bleak employment outlook to the worsening global outlook due to the European sovereign debt crisis. Almost 80 per cent of the CFOs were of the opinion that economic uncertainty was beyond normal levels.

He also pointed to the World Bank's downgrade of global growth forecasts as having resulted in dampened business optimism which would cause CFOs to avoid taking any more risk. The CFOs would rather focus on improving cash flows and growth from within instead of longer-term investments or acquisitions.

Besides causing a weak consumer confidence, the threat of another round of global financial crisis has driven up cost of borrowing from banks and tightened loan availability as previous borrowers, such as home loan mortgages, took a longer time to pay off.

In the case of Australian banks, the lenders are also pressured to pass in full any overnight cash rate cuts made by the Reserve Bank of Australia.

As a result, Australian banks are planning to cut 7,500 job in the next two years.

Economists forecast that as more Australian industries such as manufacturing, retail, construction and finance lay off more workers in the coming months the country's unemployment rate could rise to 6 per cent.

The manufacturing sector lost 44,800 jobs in the last six months, the agriculture sector shed 29,800 jobs and the retail sector cut 28,100 jobs. Although mining created 41,400 jobs for the same six-month period that ended November 2011, the sector employs only 2 per cent of Australia's work force.

Besa Deda, the chief economist at St George Bank, attributed the slow rise in unemployment rate to the decline in workforce participation rate as more Aussies give up finding work at all. She warned that the job market situation would likely turn for the worse.

"Employers are reluctant to start hiring given the global background while manufacturers are under pressure from the strong $A and credit growth is very weak for the finance sector. I think these global worries will continue and we could lose jobs on a net basis," The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Ms Deda.

Macquarie Bank senior economist Brian Redican forecasts Australia's unemployment rate to hit 6 per cent by middle of 2012, but stabilise after that. However, Deutsche Bank senior economist Phil O'Donaghoe opined that joblessness rate would be at a lower 5.5 per cent because of the continuous decline of labour participation rate.

The last time Australia's unemployment rate reached 6 per cent was in 2003, although at the peak of the global financial crisis it hit 5.9 per cent in June 2009.

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