The RBA revealed new ABS data on employment trends yesterday.

There is no real surprise that the Australian economy is dominated by the services sector (refer chart below). Over a period of one year, sectors like professional service and health care added 60,000 full-time jobs. In contrast, the manufacturing sector shed more than 20,000 jobs in the same period.

Meanwhile, the Australian Industry Group released its latest PMI (Performance of Manufacturing Index) results, which recorded a slight increase in overall employment numbers. However, long-term prospects are not rosy.  Read more...

The findings from the latest CEO Survey, conducted jointly by Australia Industry Group and Deloitte, bring good news for third-party talent solution providers.

Firstly, three quarters of all businesses are planning to hire new staff in the next two years. The larger the company turnover the more bullish the hiring intentions;  almost 90% with revenue of $200 million intend to hire additional staff (refer chart). Confidence is high in the construction sector with 85.7% of respondents indicating they will hire new staff.  Read more...

Yesterday I listened to a 24 year old (who runs three job boards) detailing his plans to launch a new job board focusing on the hospitality sector. His reason – it’s huge.

How big is the services sector?  Read more...

If you are a recruiter, the best way to make sense of the national unemployment rate, which currently sits at 5.3%, is to ignore it. Well, not really. But the real meat of the unemployment story lies in regional data. Broken down by states, Tasmania and NSW lead the nation in unemployment numbers, while employers in states like NT and ACT are likely to struggle with recruiting the right staff (Refer chart. Source: ABS).

 Read more...

Let’s have a look at the major indices monitoring the health of the job market.

The ANZ Job Index
According to the ANZ Job series, total job advertisement grew by 1.3% in July, to be 36.1% higher than they were last July. The economy added 171,685 jobs on average per week. Surprisingly, print ads did very well increasing by 1.2% while internet job ads grew only 1.3%.

 Read more...

A range of indices paint a somewhat positive picture of the year ahead.

Unemployment rate & Economy
The big news is unemployment rate dropped to 5.5% and the IMF forecasts the economy to register a growth rate of  2.5% in 2010, and 3% in 2011.  Read more...

This year, like  2009, our industry will be greatly affected by something none of us have any real control over – the economy.  But 2010 looks promising. All the major indices are showing signs of progress.

According to the ANZ’s job series jobs advertised on print grew by 11.6% during December. Online job ads also grew by 5.6%.  Similarly, the DEEWR vacancy Index also showed signs of consistent recovery. The chart below traced the uptick in jobs advertised on print media across the nation. Print advertising has increased steadily since June 09. Curiously, growth in online job ads aren’t as impressive. Still, it is good to welcome the new year with strong signs of recovery.  Read more...

A brand new year arrives. Hundreds of ‘to do’ items screams for attention. What is one supposed to do first?

I am reminded of a quote by Hank Paulson, former CEO, Goldman Sachs:

“I call 60 CEOs in the first week of the year to wish them happy New Year. …” (Source: Fortune, “Secrets of Greatness,” 0320.05 via Tom Peters)  Read more...

Some good news from the manufacturing front. According to the latest Australian PMI (Performance of Manufacturing Index) employment in the manufacturing sector rose for the first time in 23 months. The index grew from 44.6 points in October to 53.7 in November. Average wages in the sector also grew, with the wage index increasing by 3.3 points.

It’s heartening news for the overall economy when one of the most vulnerable sectors shows signs of recovery. 

   Read more...

The DEEWR Skilled Vacancy Index (SVI), which monitored jobs advertised on newspapers, increased by 2.4% in November 2009. This is the seventh consecutive month the index has moved up. 

Vacancies in the Building and Engineering Professionals sector rose by 7.8%, followed by Metal Trades (up by 6.2%), Construction Trades (up by 4.4%), and Printing Trades (up by 3.8%).

What’s encouraging, considering we are heading into the holiday season, is the fact Internet job vacancies are also up.

Is a recovery heading our way?

Even if there are no immediate proof, as a nation we are becoming more optimistic about the economy. ANU quarterly study found more Australians think the worse is behind us (Full report here). A similar theme is echoed by Nielsen’s Global Confidence Survey which found Australians are one of the most positive about economic recovery. Unemployment stands at 6.8%, but we are way ahead of other developed economies (spare a thought for Zimbabwe where the unemployment rate is 94%)  Read more...

Compared to other developed economies, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has been kinder to Australia.

Nevertheless, it seems the GFC has profoundly affected HR practices and talent management in organisations across Australia. A new study by AHRI sheds new light on how companies are coping. Downsizing is popular, even though it’s a difficult decision for most companies. Not surprisingly maximising value from the current workforce is top priority with 69.67% of respondents using performance review and providing extra support to top performers. 45% are still hiring top talent.  Read more...

The data is not pretty.  SEEK Index fell by a further 4.7% in June.

Obviously, what works for you in 2007 would probably not work now. Are you doing things differently? As Seth Godin puts it “In down economies, the only thing that’s going to change things is changing things.”

It’s true that the employment sector is not doing too well. All major indices are down, hiring have slowed, vacancies have significantly dried up and companies are  pessimistic. Very pessimistic indeed.  A recent survey  (HR Directors of Australian subsidiaries of multi-national companies) by CEO Forum highlighted the following:  Read more...

• 74% of companies are reducing their use of contractors
• 70% engaged in hiring freezes
• 66% are reducing headcounts

Overall, the economy is not healthy. The DEEWR’s Leading Indicator of Employment has fallen for the seventeenth consecutive month.  

Manpower’s latest survey also paints a pretty bleak picture of employers’ sentiment, with the index heading to negative territory.

The latest Skill Vacancy Index , which monitors the number of job vacancies advertised on newspapers, is down by 62.6% from last year. Likewise the new Internet Vacancy Index (now aggregating data from SEEK, MyCareer, CareerOne and Australian JobSearch) is down by 7.7%.  Read more...