The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) this morning released job vacancies data for the November quarter, which continued their downward trend:
- Total job vacancies in November 2012 were 169,900, a decrease of 2.2% from August 2012.
- The number of job vacancies in the private sector was 157,700 in November 2012, a decrease of 1.5% from August 2012.
- The number of job vacancies in the public sector was 12,200 in November 2012, a decrease of 10.7% from August 2012.
Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, this survey was suspended for 21 months over 2008-09, leaving a large gap in the data. Nevertheless, the data is now showing that the number of job vacancies are trending down after rising strongly between November 2009 and November 2010. In fact, the overall number of job vacancies were at a 30-month low in November 2012, according to the ABS.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, job vacancies fell in the mining states but rose in Victoria:
The overall decline in the ABS job vacancies series supports the more frequent ANZ job ads index, which fell for the eighth consecutive month in November to the lowest level since January 2010:
