THE jobs market remained robust in January as total employment advertising in newspapers and on the internet rose 2.4 per cent from December, despite widespread damage to business in Queensland after floods devastated many towns.
It was the 12th consecutive monthly rise in employment advertising, ANZ said today. Job advertising was up 40.5 per cent from a year earlier, confirming a stellar year for the $1.3 trillion commodity-rich economy, and affirming a forecast on Friday by the Reserve Bank of Australia that solid employment creation is set to continue.
In a breakdown of the January data, newspaper job ads fell 0.1 per cent and internet job ads rose 2.5 per cent.
ANZ said flooding held back the pace of job creation in the week ending January 16. After adjusting for the impact, total job advertising was likely closer to 3.1 per cent stronger over the month. The Queensland disaster is expected to shave 0.5 percentage points off economic growth in 2010-11.
"Even before taking account of the impact of the Queensland floods, the 2.4 per cent rise in job advertising in January was a relatively healthy result," said Ivan Colhoun, head of Australian economics at ANZ. "This suggests Australian labour demand remained reasonably solid in the latter months of 2010 in spite of some patchiness in a number of sectors of the economy."
Still, all eyes remain on the growing scarcity of skilled labour in Australia as the economy heads toward full employment. It's a dynamic which is expected to fuel inflationary pressure in 2011, especially as growth revs up in the second half of the year fanned by Queensland's reconstruction and accelerated investment in the booming mining sector.
Official employment data for January will be released on Thursday. ANZ expects a further 35,000 jobs were created in January taking unemployment to 4.9 per cent from 5.0 per cent.
Source: Business with the Wall Street Journal by James Glynn
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