It’s a case of being stuck in the doldrums for the Australian job market as newly released figures show a drop in vacancies while other research highlights a collapse in sentiment over the country’s job market.
Australia’s job market is a tale of woe currently with new figures released from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showing vacancies hit an eight-year low in the November quarter.
According to the data the number of job vacancies fell by 1.7% in the three months to November. The last time the figures were this low was in in November 2005.
The quarterly survey showed there were 140,600 in the quarter to November, down from 143,100 in the August quarter. It also revealed a drop of 0.6% in private sector vacancies while the numbers of public sector vacancies were down 13.8% - a drop of 10,000 from the August quarter of 11,600.
Meanwhile other research has shown that job market confidence has fallen in Australia. Global Career Link quarterly review on the sentiment of job market and economic headlines of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom revealed a bleak picture in Australia.
It showed that after an increase in positive headlines in October, rising from 23% in September to 40%, since then they have become “decidedly negative”. In November positive headlines collapsed to 13% before declining to 11% in December.
Comparatively in New Zealand headlines were 100% positive in December and 89% in the UK.
However, Global Career Link stated that while the Australian job market “is not flash right now it will bounce back”.
