Unemployment outlook for 2023
With unemployment rates sitting at around 3.5% and the combined rates of unemployed and underemployment currently at its lowest level since March 1982, it looks like the competition for talent across Australia will continue to be fierce this year.
(Source Australian Bureau of statistics)
Although advertising has actually slowed down slightly in recent months, job adverts are still sitting at levels of almost 40% higher compared to pre-pandemic levels and candidates still have plenty of options available to them.
Recent data from Australia’s top job site Seek.com.au indicated that job ads have fallen in the last 7 months of 2022 but are still significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels and a slowdown in recovery activity as well as tighter financial conditions across the market are most likely contributing to this.
The unemployment rate continues to remain at low levels with record high participation rate of 66.8%. This is despite an additional 64,000 extra jobs added from Nov to Dec 2022 and there are now 221,000 fewer unemployed people in Australia compared to the height of COVID restrictions in March 2020.
The top 3 Growth Industries for the last quarter were Education & Training, Accounting and Engineering.
However according to another recent Report from recruitment software provider JobAdder “The market is slowing, job numbers are dropping and candidate flow is increasing,” The slowdown in jobs has been seen in white-collar roles such as business support, accounting, marketing, and legal support.
Initially high-demand areas such as IT were unaffected but towards the end of 2022, clients in those sectors reported meaningful decline but according to industry experts “It’s gone from boom, to just very good and there is a lot of hiring still going on, it’s just a bit more cautious."
The insights from JobAdder are backed by Australian Bureau of Statistics data that shows there were 444,200 job vacancies last November, a decrease of 4.9 per cent from three months earlier.
(Source Australian Financial Review and JobAdder)
At Hunter we certainly haven’t seen a slow down in jobs from our clients and the number of applications has remained at similar levels to last quarter. One reason for Seek job ads dropping and less jobs being listed may be because the emphasis on filling jobs has been more proactive with companies and recruiters focusing more on approaching and headhunting candidates and utilising their networks to find people rather than relying on active candidates applying via adverts.
Either way, its likely that 2023 will continue to be a buoyant job market with plenty of options available to appropriately skilled candidates wanting to make a move and challenging times for employers looking to hire.
If you are interested in talking to a consultant about your career or finding staff for your organisation please contact us and we will be happy to help.