Some early positive signs: Aus job ads c55k vs. the c45k end of April trough
Australian job inventories have shown another week-on-week improvement (see figure 1 below). Job inventories were c55k at 13-May-20, c15% above job inventories of c48k at 6-May-20. This suggests inventories have recovered to mid-April levels, but remain below early March volumes of c150k. We remind we only capture a point-in-time snapshot of job inventories, but we cannot measure the rate of listings turnover i.e. we are not necessarily capturing the change in new listings. There may also still be an element of seasonality influencing the numbers. Nevertheless we have generally seen a week-on-week improvement in inventories across most sectors. We flag the sectors which have shown: 1) the greatest % week-on-week improvement include real estate, retail, and hospitality (albeit off a low base), and 2) the greatest nominal week-on-week improvement in listings include healthcare, trades and services, transport and logistics.
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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.
