Yahoo Finance Businesses aren’t hiring as much, but they’re offering Aussies bigger salaries
Businesses are less keen on hiring as job ad growth continues to decline, with the month of May recording 6.5 per cent less job advertisements than the same time last year.
According to Seek’s latest employment report, every Australian state except the Australian Capital Territory showed a drop in the volume of job advertisements.
Only five sectors showed positive ad growth, with the education and training industry leading the way with 13.7 per cent year-on-year growth leading up to May 2019.
The healthcare and medical sector continued to flourish with 7.8 per cent growth, followed by the farming, animals and conservation industry at 6.2 per cent and the mining, resources and energy sector at 5.3 per cent.
There are 0.3 per cent more job ads in the science and technology sector in May this year than there was last year.
The shrinking sectors are design and architecture with a stunning -26.8 per cent drop in job ads compared to last year, as well as construction (-21.9 per cent) and the real estate and property industry (19.7 per cent).
In perspective
However, this month’s overall drop in job ads is less than last month’s fall of 8.9 per cent, noted Seek ANZ managing director Kendra Banks.
“We suspected that April advertising was heavily impacted by multiple public holidays and the lead up to the Federal Election,” she said.
“While May job ad volumes are still down from 2018 it is important to note that 2018 was somewhat of an anomaly with the highest [job ad volumes] in the past decade.
“If we compare May 2019 to May 2017, we can see that this month had 3.0 per cent more jobs advertised.”
It will be interesting to see which industries commit to new headcount as businesses set their 2020 financial year budgets, Banks added.
“Our data is showing strong growth across Education and Training and Healthcare and Medical sectors, and we will watch these sectors closely as we head into what is traditionally the busiest recruitment period of the year.”
Job ads down, but pay cheques bigger
Interestingly, while the volume of job advertisements has decreased, average advertised salaries have bumped up 3.4 per cent across Australia compared to last year, according to the report.
Tasmania had the strongest salary growth at 5.8 per cent, followed by Western Australia (4.3 per cent) and Queensland (3.8 per cent).
Banks added: “We have seen salary increases in the majority of sectors, with the ones with the biggest growth being advertising, arts and media (+6.6 per cent), banking and financial services (+6.4 per cent), community services and development (+6.2 per cent), trades and services (+5.6 per cent), human resources and recruitment (+5.1 per cent).”
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