Another strong month for job ads according to the ANZ’s survey for March, but the reality is that it was a solid month for jobs advertised on the net.
Newspaper ads were soft, rising 0.2% and continuing the less than solid trend seen for most of the past couple of years.
Internet job ads rose 1.4% in March and were the main driver behind the 1.3% overall rise in job ads to 195,913.
That was up from the downwardly revised 1.1% growth seen in February and means job ads are now just over 19% above where they were a year ago.
But they are still 30% under the all time monthly peak of 275,000 jobs seen in April 2008 as the GFC was starting to crunch the financial system and slow economies.
“Job advertising continued to strengthen in March, suggesting the Australian economy continues to create jobs in spite of the somewhat diverse rates of economic growth by region and industry sector,” said ANZ Head of Australian economics and property research Ivan Colhoun.
“This suggests that while labour demand is strengthening, the labour market is not yet as tight as it was during the height of the first phase of the commodity boom,” he said.
Analysts say the news points to a strong jobs report for last month from the Australian Bureau of Statistics jobs data on Thursday.
Analysts polled by Bloomberg are expecting employers to have created 24,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate staying at 5 %, where it has been since January.
There is nothing in this report that will worry the Reserve Bank for its monthly board meeting that will leave the cash rate steady on 4.75%.
The monthly TD Securities/Melbourne Institute inflation gauge showed an 0.6% monthly rise in the headline rate (up from 0.2% in February), but the annual trimmed mean (which discounts for the more volatile price movements) rose by just 2.4% compared to the 3.8% for the annual headline rate.
The central bank will have also noted the continuing rise in the value of the Australian dollar to more than $US1.04 yesterday, which is acting like a rate rise in itself.
The ANZ’s Mr Colhoun said the stable unemployment rate suggested the economy was on track to grow by around 3% to 3.5% annually.
“This should not generate significant broad-based wages or inflationary pressures and would be consistent with the RBA retaining an unchanged interest rate setting for some time.
“Higher oil and food prices in recent months, however, are troubling central banks around the world and will also be weighing on the Reserve Bank’s mind,” Mr Colhoun said,
In NSW, newspaper job ads fell 1.7%, seasonally adjusted in March, while in Victoria they jumped 6.1%.
In Queensland they fell 2.9% and there was a 1% fall in South Australia.
But Western Australia saw a big fall, down 4.9% on last month which was the fifth consecutive month of declines.
"This is in direct contradiction to anecdotes of increasing labour market tightness in WA as activity in the mining sector strengthens once again," said Mr Colhoun.
"The trend bears watching, though we doubt its veracity, which may even reflect difficulties sourcing labour in WA’s already relatively tight labour market."
Jobs ads rose 2.1% in the Australian Capital Territory.
