The small rise in the number of job vacancies reported on Thursday is not enough to provide real hope that a solid pickup in jobs growth is under way.
The flip side of that is that there is still a good chance of an interest rate cut in the coming few months.
Data from the three-monthly survey by Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed the number of job vacancies across the nation rose by 0.3 per cent between November and February, but was still down by 4.1 per cent from a year earlier.
Vacancies in the mining sector were up by 22.2 per cent over the 12-month period, but still only accounted for one in 20 vacancies, so that was not enough to offset falls averaging 5.2 per cent outside the booming mining industry.
The figures can be combined with employment and unemployment data from the labour force survey to generate indicators of demand for labour.
They generally show a flat trend.
In February, there 28.8 vacancies for every 100 people officially unemployed.
A year ago, that measure was reading 31.5 vacancies per 100 jobless.
Another way of looking at it is the number of unemployed per vacancy, which rose to 3.5 from 3.2 a year before.
The number of vacancies per 100 people already in work was 2.8 in February compared with 3.1 a year before.
Overall, the figures show the labour market is still in much the same state it has been in over the past year.
If anything, jobs have become just that little bit scarcer.
The number of people with jobs has risen marginally – by 22,300 or 0.2 per cent – over the past year and is on a flat trend, according to the ABS estimates.
The flat trend is most likely something of an under-estimate – a recent pick-up im immigration has not yet been factored into the labour force survey’s projections of population growth and therefore estimates of employment growth.
But even allowing for that, the trend in employment growth is still weak – much weaker than it has to be to stop unemployment from rising over time.
The vacancies figures suggest we are in for much the same thing in the coming few months at least.
That means pressure on wages growth, a key driver of consumer price inflation, should remain benign.
And it therefore means the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will have a solid argument in favour of loosening the monetary shackles in the coming few months if the run of data continues to show the mining boom is not doing enough to make up for weakness in other sectors.
