Worst may be over for job market
By Peter Martin | | 03 August
The Olivier advertisement index stopped falling last month after more than a year of free-fall.
In Victoria it slipped less than 1 per cent after months of sliding more than 3 per cent.
The index is made up of the number of jobs advertised on each of Australia’s three leading employment websites and closely tracks the ANZ index, which will be updated today.
Nationally 189,228 jobs were advertised in July, roughly unchanged from June.
Big gains in advertisements for construction workers, information technology workers and tradespeople offset continuing declines in the demand for finance, accounting and administrative workers. ‘‘We are beginning to see an unwinding of the slide that began early last year,’’ said Olivier Recruitment director Robert Olivier.
‘‘The slides in the first three months of this year were appalling — the worst I have ever reported — and they will probably be reflected in worse official employment figures on Thursday because vacancies are filled with a lag, but beyond that things are looking better.’’
In Victoria vacancies for building and construction jobs surged 8 per cent and vacancies in the information technology and retail industries climbed 4 and 3 per cent, almost offsetting continuing slides in accounting, administrative and education jobs.
‘‘Melbourne and Sydney are recovering ahead of the rest of Australia after diving first,’’ said Mr Olivier. ‘‘They lost their finance sector jobs early, and Queensland and Western Australian employers waited before letting go of staff. But now employers in the east are telling me they need to replace workers who have left.’’
The news comes ahead of a Reserve Bank board meeting tomorrow considered certain to leave rates on hold. Alice Springs-based bookmaker Centrebet says one punter put $10,000 on there being no change on Tuesday and followed it up with a second bet of $50,000.
Treasurer Wayne Swan conceded that interest rates were set to climb as the economy recovered, telling Channel Nine yesterday that rates were at their lowest in 40 years, so it was ‘‘obvious that at some time into the future rates will certainly rise and the Reserve Bank will take that decision’’.
Tomorrow’s Reserve Bank board meeting follows an optimistic speech by bank governor Glenn Stevens last week asserting that Australians were increasingly seeing the ‘‘glass as half full’’ and that the downturn ‘‘may turn out not to be one of the more serious ones of the postwar era’’.
The board is likely to remove the so-called ‘‘easing bias’’ apparent in the minutes of its last three meetings, which canvassed the possibility of a further interest rate cut.
Mr Stevens said he was prepared to increase interest rates even while the unemployment rate was still rising, encouraging financial markets to price in an interest rate rise before the end of this year and an increase of 1.5 to 2.0 percentage points throughout next year.
