A steady increase in the number of job ads backs other data showing the Australian economy is continuing to perform strongly, a bank economist says.
Releasing the monthly Job Ads Index, which found ads in newspapers rose by 1.5% in August but fell 6% on the Internet, ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake says the level of job advertising is consistent with employment growth of 12-15,000 new jobs a month for the rest of the year.
"The modest upward trend in job advertising over the past few months indicates that employment should increase over the remainder of this year, following declines in five of the past six months," he says.
"This is consistent with other evidence suggesting that the Australian economy is beginning to regain some momentum in the early months of the 2003/04 financial year, after slowing significantly during the 2002/03 year.
"Increasing evidence of an improvement in the global economy, rising share prices and the prospect of a rebound in the rural sector later this year appear to be giving employers sufficient confidence to contemplate increasing their payrolls."
However, Eslake warns employment growth will have to double to reach the federal government's Budget forecast of 1.75% for 2003/04.
In trend terms, the number of newspaper job ads rose by 1.1%, the largest monthly increase since March last year, but still 3.9% below levels of 12 months ago.
The introduction of the federal government's employment services contract on the Australian Job Search website affected Internet ads, which fell by 6% after a 12.4% increase in July.
The total number of ads fell by 4.3% to an average of 91,932 a week, following a 9.8% increase in July, while in trend terms, the total number rose by 0.8%.
"Employment growth of around 15,000 per month, on average, would be sufficient to keep the unemployment rate at between 6 and 6¼%, depending on the extent to which signs of improving job prospects attract previously discouraged jobseekers back into the labour force, reversing the decline in the participation rate which appears to have occurred over the past six months," Eslake says.