Australia's labour market is poised for its strongest bounceback yet from COVID-19 lockdowns, with payroll jobs already recovering and job advertising surging, Perth Now reports.
Consumers also have more confidence because the unemployment rate is set to be lower than it has been since the mid-1990s.
EY senior economist Johnathan McMenamin believes the speed of the labour market recovery is "harder, better, faster and stronger than after previous lockdowns".
"The labour market might break the sound barrier," Mr McMenamin said.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) announced that payroll jobs had risen by 1.3 per cent in the fortnight to October 16, following a fall of 0.5 per cent in the previous two weeks.
"Payroll jobs increased through the first half of October, as lockdowns and other restrictions eased," Bjorn Jarvis - ABS head of labour statistics - said.
The most significant changes were in NSW, where payrolls rose 3.5 per cent. They were up 2.4 per cent in the ACT and 0.8 per cent higher in Victoria.
The report comes ahead of today's full labour force report for October.
Employers are busy recruiting staff; online job advertiser SEEK reported the highest number of ads in a month in its more than 23-year history.
"A combination of the lifting of restrictions in our two largest employment markets, NSW and Victoria, along with businesses getting ready for what will hopefully be a bumper holiday period has had a huge impact on this month's job ad volumes," Kendra Banks - ANZ managing director - said.
Job adverts climbed by 10.2 per cent in October, 63.2 per cent higher than a year earlier. They were up 44 per cent up in comparison to October 2019, before the pandemic.
The biggest growth for the month was from the jurisdictions coming out of lockdown; NSW was up 20.3 per cent, the ACT 19 per cent and Victoria 16.3 per cent higher.
The latest Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment survey reportedly found unemployment expectations falling 11 per cent to an index of 95.3 points in November, the lowest reading since the mid-1990s.
"The index measures expectations for unemployment over the next 12 months; a lower reading indicating more consumers expect unemployment to fall than rise, a positive signal for confidence in the jobs market," Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said.
Overall, the survey found confidence rising 0.6 per cent in November to an index of 105.3, comfortably above the 100-mark; indicating that optimists outweigh pessimists.
"In recent months the success of vaccination rollouts has underpinned a confident consumer despite being in lockdown," Mr Evans said.
In the wake of this good news, the majority of Australians intend to spend the same amount of money or more this Christmas shopping season than last year.
However, the outlook was not uniformly positive.
Digital credit reporting agency CreditorWatch cautioned that business failures are likely to rise again once retail banks and the Australian Taxation Office stop going as gently on debt collection as they did during the height of the pandemic.
CreditorWatch CEO Patrick Coghlan told a webinar he expects a return to some sort of normality by mid-2022.
"There is going to be a sustained increase we think. We are not expecting a flood or a wave or a big step change in insolvencies," he said.
Source: Perth Now
(Quotes via original reporting)
Australia's labour market is poised for its strongest bounceback yet from COVID-19 lockdowns, with payroll jobs already recovering and job advertising surging, Perth Now reports.
Consumers also have more confidence because the unemployment rate is set to be lower than it has been since the mid-1990s.
EY senior economist Johnathan McMenamin believes the speed of the labour market recovery is "harder, better, faster and stronger than after previous lockdowns".
"The labour market might break the sound barrier," Mr McMenamin said.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) announced that payroll jobs had risen by 1.3 per cent in the fortnight to October 16, following a fall of 0.5 per cent in the previous two weeks.
"Payroll jobs increased through the first half of October, as lockdowns and other restrictions eased," Bjorn Jarvis - ABS head of labour statistics - said.
The most significant changes were in NSW, where payrolls rose 3.5 per cent. They were up 2.4 per cent in the ACT and 0.8 per cent higher in Victoria.
The report comes ahead of today's full labour force report for October.
Employers are busy recruiting staff; online job advertiser SEEK reported the highest number of ads in a month in its more than 23-year history.
"A combination of the lifting of restrictions in our two largest employment markets, NSW and Victoria, along with businesses getting ready for what will hopefully be a bumper holiday period has had a huge impact on this month's job ad volumes," Kendra Banks - ANZ managing director - said.
Job adverts climbed by 10.2 per cent in October, 63.2 per cent higher than a year earlier. They were up 44 per cent up in comparison to October 2019, before the pandemic.
The biggest growth for the month was from the jurisdictions coming out of lockdown; NSW was up 20.3 per cent, the ACT 19 per cent and Victoria 16.3 per cent higher.
The latest Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment survey reportedly found unemployment expectations falling 11 per cent to an index of 95.3 points in November, the lowest reading since the mid-1990s.
"The index measures expectations for unemployment over the next 12 months; a lower reading indicating more consumers expect unemployment to fall than rise, a positive signal for confidence in the jobs market," Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said.
Overall, the survey found confidence rising 0.6 per cent in November to an index of 105.3, comfortably above the 100-mark; indicating that optimists outweigh pessimists.
"In recent months the success of vaccination rollouts has underpinned a confident consumer despite being in lockdown," Mr Evans said.
In the wake of this good news, the majority of Australians intend to spend the same amount of money or more this Christmas shopping season than last year.
However, the outlook was not uniformly positive.
Digital credit reporting agency CreditorWatch cautioned that business failures are likely to rise again once retail banks and the Australian Taxation Office stop going as gently on debt collection as they did during the height of the pandemic.
CreditorWatch CEO Patrick Coghlan told a webinar he expects a return to some sort of normality by mid-2022.
"There is going to be a sustained increase we think. We are not expecting a flood or a wave or a big step change in insolvencies," he said.
Source: Perth Now
(Quotes via original reporting)