Grim news for Aussie jobseekers as market is shrinking

Australia’s job market is shrinking, with employment platform behemoth Seek saying the peak times to either switch roles or get a pay rise are likely behind us. In its latest labour market balance report, Seek is warning Aussies the job market has become looser over the last two years and “broadly balanced”. A tight labour market means it is easy for jobseekers to find work and is generally seen as better for employees, while a loose labour market means that there is more competition among jobseekers for fewer roles. Seek said the indicators revealed there were still jobs out there for those who were searching, but they were not as plentiful as they had been over the last few years. “It is taking 10 weeks longer for the average jobseeker to find a job and there is more competition for roles,” Seek report author Blair Chapman wrote. “From a hirer perspective, this means that there are now more potential candidates to choose from and roles should be easier to fill than in 2022.” While pointing to a bleak overall picture for employees moving forward, there are still pockets where jobseekers can get ahead. Job ads for healthcare medical, community services deployment and manufacturing transport logistics remain elevated despite Australia’s economy slowing. On the other side, jobs in information communication technology and banking finance are no longer in demand and demand has fallen below pre-Covid levels. This is likely going to have a flow-on effect for Aussies next pay rise, as wages also tend to grow faster when the market is tight and employers have to offer higher wages to attract top talent. “Wages can take time to reflect an imbalance in the market because of the nature of wage settings in Australia,” Mr Chapman said. Although there is a silver lining for employees, the labour market still remains tighter than five years ago. The report said while the labour market was slightly loose in 2019 on average, it is a natural comparison point to use for assessing where we sit today, as it was the year before we experienced the massive disruptions caused by Cvid and the economy was relatively stable. “If the Australian economy is operating at its full potential, the labour market should be a little tighter than it was in 2019 when the RBA was cutting the cash rate to encourage faster economic growth, and the labour market was not tight,” Mr Chapman said. Seek’s report follows Australia’s official unemployment rate holding steady for three months, at 4.1 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The number of unemployed people in October was 67,000 higher than a year ago but was still 82,000 people lower than in March 2020. “With employment rising by around 16,000 people and the number of unemployed up by around 8000, the unemployment rate remained at 4.1 per cent,” ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said. “This was the third month in a row that the unemployment rate had been at 4.1 per cent. This is around 0.6 percentage points above its recent low of 3.5 per cent in June 2023 but is 1.1 percentage points below March 2020 when it was 5.2 per cent.”