Job advertising in Australia fell in April from multi-year highs, but they still signal to ongoing robust labor demand, which will likely bring unemployment down to its lowest level since the early 1970s.
Total job adverts declined 0.5 percent in April from March, according to data released Monday by Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ.AX). Advertisements were nevertheless up 26.3 percent year over year at 242,536 and up more than 57 percent from February 2020, when the epidemic first struck.
“In the next months, we anticipate robust labor demand to translate to significant employment increases,” said David Plank, ANZ’s head of Australian economics. “By the second part of 2022, we expect the jobless rate to fall well below 4%, reinforcing the momentum toward faster wage growth.”
The unemployment rate has dropped dramatically in the last year to 4.0 percent, and further decline is projected in April.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is likely to raise interest rates from record lows of 0.1 percent at either its May or June policy meetings, with the economy nearly at full employment and inflation running high.
The bank’s board of directors meets on Tuesday, and expectations are high that it will raise rates to 0.25 percent, signaling the start of a tightening cycle that could see rates reach 2.5 percent by the end of the year, according to investors.
