As seen in the table below from employment website SEEK, job advertisements for property workers are now also falling fast.
Seek has recorded the percentage change in advertisements on its platform in the year to March.
The downturn in the housing market has had a major impact on demand for workers with ads for design and architecture, real estate and property, and construction workers all falling by 19.8% or more over the past 12 months.
Along with advertisements in those categories, a further nine professions recorded annual declines of more than 10%, including retail workers.
Behind healthcare, retail and construction are the largest employers in Australia, so these declines, if replicated in official jobs data, point to downside risks for hiring in the months ahead.
More broadly, SEEK said total advertisements on its platform fell by 4.7% over the year.
Without a strong increase in advertisements in government-related sectors, that decrease would have been significantly larger.
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
