ANZ job ads is out today and is unchanged from October. It appears this level of ads is equivalent to a slowly rising unemployment rate. For interests sake, I’ve included at the end a second report from Westpac on some of the peculiarities of the ANZ series. Here are the ANZ highlights:
The number of job advertisements on the internet and in newspapers was unchanged in November compared to the previous month. Annual growth in total job advertisements slowed to 0.2% y/y.
• Newspaper job ads were 0.6% higher in November, while internet job advertising was broadly unchanged. Newspaper advertising is now 15.9% lower than a year ago, while internet advertising is 1.0% higher over the same period, in part reflecting the continuing trend towards advertising online.
• In trend terms, total job ads fell by 0.3% m/m in November and are now 0.5% lower than year-earlier levels. Job advertising began slowing in January 2011 and growth has been negative since April.ANZ Head of Australian Economics and Property Research Ivan Colhoun said:
• The number of job advertisements was broadly unchanged in November compared to the previous month. While the pace of monthly falls in trend job advertisements have slowed since June, November was the eighth consecutive month of trend decline. The tentative slowdown in the pace of job advertising decline, if sustained, is an encouraging development as it would signal only mild upward pressure on the unemployment rate, as well as less pressure for Australian interest rates to fall much further.
• The negative trend in job advertisements points towards only modest employment gains for the Australian economy over coming months. Indeed, the current trend rate of employment growth is unlikely to be fast enough to absorb the forecast growth in the labour force over coming months. As a result, ANZ forecasts the unemployment rate to rise to 5½% by mid-2012. The unemployment rate is then expected to fall at a modest pace, supported by strong mining and infrastructure investment.
• The geographic disparities in job advertising were again evident in the November data. The mining states of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory continued to outperform the more populous states of New South Wales and Victoria (see table 3). As a result, employment growth disparities between states are expected to continue in the short-term.
• The Australian economy continues to experience large and conflicting cross currents. Mining and infrastructure investment is rising strongly at the same time as the global economic outlook has continued to deteriorate. The European sovereign debt crisis and weaker Chinese outlook are likely to increasingly weigh on local interest rate decisions, notwithstanding the strength in investment. Together with a more benign inflation outlook, ANZ on balance expects an ‘insurance’ rate cut of 25bps by the RBA in December, though this is not as high a conviction call as the expectation of a rate cut in November.
• The ABS publishes November labour force data on Thursday. ANZ expects total employment to rise by 5,000 and the unemployment rate to remain at 5.3%.
