We got updates from two completely different parts of the economy yesterday with very contrasting pictures revealed.
The latest ANZ job ads report for July showed another rise and is now 36% above the same month last year.
But housing finance figures for June were just bad, with negative readings across the board, so much so that the number of established dwellings financed in the month fell to the lowest since March 2000. (See next story).
Looking at the job ads, they rose 1.3% in July after the upwardly revised 2.8% rise in June.
There was an average of 171,685 newspaper and internet jobs per week last month, the highest level in 18 months.
”While it is encouraging to see a broad-based rise in job advertising in July, the trend in monthly advertisement gains is moderating,” ANZ chief economist Warren Hogan said in yesterday’s statement.
But it should be pointed out that a couple of months ago, when newspaper job ads fell (they recovered in July), Mr Hogan warned they could be telling us that the jobs might start seeing slower growth.
For July, job ads in newspapers rose 1.2%, ending three months of declines.
That left them up 14.5% on a year ago, which is decent growth.
Job ads on the internet increased by 1.3% in July, to be 37.6% higher than the same month last year.
But newspaper ads now only account for around 5% or so of total monthly ads, the remainder can be found on the internet and they have shown remarkably strong growth this year.
We will see how it’s travelling on Thursday with the latest labour force data from the ABS
The ANZ is forecasting 20,000 new jobs in July; other forecasts are up around 25,000.
A huge 353,000 net new jobs were created in the year to June.
