The recent interest rate rises have not thwarted the business sector's hiring intentions according to today's ANZ Job Advertisements survey.
The survey shows the total number of job ads (both newspaper and Internet) rose by 3.35% in November taking the number of advertised vacancies to an average of 104,442 per week, the highest level for 20 months.
Queensland suffered a 1% fall in job ads after six consecutive increases, however in trend terms the level of advertising in the state in November was the highest since August 1989.
"The ongoing upward trend in job advertising in newspapers and on the Internet point to continued growth in employment into the early months of 2004," ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake says.
"Indeed, employment growth could average nearly 20,000 per month over the next few months - compared with an average of just over 18,000 per month over the past six months - although the employment figures are likely to continue to show significant month-to-month swings."
The number of ad in metropolitan newspapers rose by 0.1% in November, after a 1.45 increase in October to an average of 22,148 per week. Internet ads rose by 4.2% in November (5.9% in October) to an average of 82,294 per week.
"Employment growth at this pace would be sufficient to push the unemployment rate down to 5.5% - lower than in any month since June 1981 and with the exception of that month lower than at any time since early 1977 - provided there were further increase in the labour force participation rate from October's level," Eslake says.
"The government would thus have good grounds for lowering its projection of the June 2004 unemployment rate in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook."
Other results:
- the largest increases were in Tasmania (up 7%) and the ACT (4.2%) both after declines of more than 3% in October
- South Australia rose by 2.7% to its highest level since May 2000
- New South Wales rose by 2%
- besides Queensland, the Northern Territory (down 5.5%) and Victoria (2.6%) suffered falls.