Where are the jobs being created?

The ANZ has released a very useful analysis of the quarterly detailed labour force data to the end of February. At this stage it’s not easy to find reliable trends vis-a-vis Australian rebalancing, other than the one consistent fact that manufacturing jobs are toast. There are hints as well that the mining bust, such as it is, has barely begun, that Queensland public austerity has quickly been reversed, and that tourism is surging in NSW or we’re all drinking a lot more. Retail and wholesale also look to be off the canvas. Despite the shortcomings, it is well worth a read. State by state trends are at the end of the document. Find it below.

• The ABS released its quarterly detailed labour force statistics for the three months to February late last week. Aggregate employment is estimated to have increased by around 190,000 persons (or 1.7%) over the year to February. This includes, however, a large 70,000 increase in employment in the month of February 2013, of which nearly half was due to sample rotation according to the ABS. For this reason, some caution needs to be used when interpreting changes in employment at the industry level over the three months to February and over the year.
• The key points of the detailed labour force release are below and are summarised in Figures 1 and 2:
• the number of involuntary ‘job losers’ declined over the three months to February after increasing significantly last year due to higher redundancies;
• mining employment rose modestly over the three months to February, with gains in WA and Queensland offset by further weakness in coal mining employment in NSW;
• wholesale trade employment – 4% of the total – is estimated to have risen by a sharp 40,000 persons over the three months to February and by 65,000 persons, or 16%, over the year. Some of this strength is likely to be statistical noise. Nevertheless, strong jobs growth over the year in motor vehicle wholesaling andgrocery, liquor & tobacco wholesaling appears consistent with heightened activity in these sectors. A large share of the increase was in NSW. Transport employment – largely road transport – also rose strongly over the year to February, presumably related to strength in wholesale activity but also mining-related activity;
• growth in hospitality employment was also robust over the three months to February and over the year. This appears to have been largely concentrated in NSW and mostly in food & beverage services but is at odds with weak output growth in this industry;
• construction employment rose for the second consecutive quarter, broadly in line with a modest pick-up in construction output;
• public administration employment rose over the most recent three months and in a relatively broad-based fashion across states after significant prior weakness. This seems at odds with the tight rein on government spending at the federal and state levels. Health and education employment also continued to trend strongly higher;
• manufacturing employment fell sharply over the three months to February,with weakness broadly based across states. This followed some resilience in 2012 but over the past three years manufacturing employment has been the weakest of all industries (Figure 3); and
• business services employment declined modestly over the most recent three months and over the year. Presumably this partly reflects cost-cutting across a range of businesses.
• The Appendix shows changes in industry-level employment for the major states over the year to February.

Labour Force Feb 2013 quarterly detail.pdf by Heidi Taylor