'That's a fair departure from last year when the job market was regularly adding 100,000 people or more a quarter'
Job vacancies across Australia remained higher-than-normal amid a slowdown in employment growth, according to a new report.
Indeed's Hiring Lab revealed that the job postings index for Australia is still 52% higher than the pre-pandemic baseline through early April.
"Employers continue to report higher-than-normal vacancies that need to be filled," said Callam Pickering, senior economist at Indeed, in the report.
The strength in labour demand comes despite a slowdown in employment growth, with employment for the first quarter only seeing an additional 6,500 people, according to the report.
"That's a fair departure from last year when the job market was regularly adding 100,000 people or more a quarter," Pickering said.
"Australian employment increased by 308,000 people over the past year, but just 96,600 people over the past six months. A little over half of annual employment growth was driven by full-time employment."
Pickering noted that the unemployment rate is at 4.1%, saying it was surprising given the slowdown in employment.
"The reason, however, is quite simple: Australia's participation rate has declined by 0.5 percentage points over the past two months, effectively absorbing the impact of low employment growth," he said.
"If the participation rate had held steady at its record high from January, Australia's unemployment rate would have jumped to 4.7% — a far cry from the 4.1% official rate."
Other labour indicators, however, such as the underemployment rate have remained healthy, as they have reported their lowest level since August 2008.
"Australian workers are increasingly able to find the hours they need, critical when faced with cost-of-living pressures," Pickering said.
The senior economist warned that carnage in financial markets, high levels of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and suddenly weaker economic outlook are likely to have an impact on the labour market conditions this year.
"That said, conditions had already softened slightly over the first three months of the year, with employment growing modestly compared to strong gains last year," he said."Forward-looking measures of labour demand remain healthy, but that could change quickly if global growth deteriorates."
