Australia: Job vacancies hold up - ANZ

Felicity Emmett, senior economist at ANZ, notes that the Australian job vacancies rose 1.4% in the three months to February, and were up 9.9% y/y, marking its eleventh straight rise in job vacancies and is a record run of gains.

Key Quotes

“Annual growth has slowed from a peak of 25.6% in May last year.”

“Across the industries, the strongest area was construction, where annual growth rose to 11.6% from 8.1%.”

“Considered together, the broad suite of labour market leading indicators is suggesting slower growth in employment over the next few months. The softer tone to the February vacancies data is consistent with that, although the slowdown suggested by vacancies is more modest than most other indicators.”

“We see employment growth slowing to 1.7% by year-end, although we expect that broad stability in the unemployment rate will keep the RBA on the sidelines.”