Job advertisements fell to their lowest levels for three years in December as firms held back on employing new staff amid difficult times.
The ANZ job advertisements series published on Monday said the total number of job ads placed in major metropolitan newspapers and on the internet tumbled 3.8 per cent in December.
Job ads have backpedalled for the past 10 months and were now at about half the level reached before the global financial crisis, ANZ said.
ANZ senior economist Justin Fabo said weak jobs ads, coupled with an economy expected to grow below trend in 2013 and a high currency, paved the way for further interest rate cuts from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).
The weak jobs ads growth in the economy suggested “conditions for a large share of Australian businesses remain challenging and the outlook uncertain”, Mr Fabo said.
“Further monetary easing is therefore necessary to generate sufficient expansion in interest-rate sensitive sectors to support overall growth and limit the rise in the unemployment rate,” Mr Fabo said in a statement.
ANZ was forecasting a 25 basis point rate cut “in coming months”, with further easing expected over the rest of 2013.
The RBA cut the cash rate by 25 basis points to three per cent in December, levels not seen since the global financial crisis.
The central bank traditionally does not meet in January and is due to hand down its next interest rate decision on February 5.
Citi economists Josh Williamson and Paul Brennan said the ANZ job ads report was “not particularly encouraging”.
“The near-term outlook is for employment growth to remain well below trend,” the pair said in a research note.
CommSec chief economist Craig James said the report suggested employers were not actively seeking staff but may be holding onto existing workers, reducing hours or pay “to get through the softer times”.
Mr James noted that although jobs ads had fallen for 10 straight months, the national jobless rate had “barely budged”.
“Just as job seekers and businesses moved from classified ads to internet sites, there may be another shift occurring to social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook,” Mr James said in a research note.
Australia’s unemployment rate was 5.2 per cent in November 2012, having hovered between 5.0 per cent and 5.4 per cent over the past 12 months.
The ABS will publish the December labour force report on Thursday.
Economists were expecting 4,000 jobs to have been added in the month and an unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent.
ANZ said it received only partial data for newspaper job ads in NSW and Victoria in December and used estimates for the missing numbers.
But it said any effect on the total number was likely to be small.
