Australia’s hiring outlook improves as Seek sees job ads stabilise before RBA interest rate call

Job listings platform Seek sees early signs of recovery, with an interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank set to boost hiring confidence in the coming months.

Job listings platform Seek sees early signs of recovery, with an expected interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank set to boost hiring confidence in the coming months. Picture: John Grainger

Australia’s job market is showing signs of recovery, with Seek reporting a stabilisation in job advertising volumes and forecasting a return to last year’s levels by July.

The stabilisation comes after the $8.63bn employment listings group reported a weaker profit in the six months to December, driven by weaker hiring activity from businesses feeling the pinch from inflationary and economic pressures.

Seek chief executive Ian Narev says the Reserve Bank’s first interest rate cut since 2020 is likely to encourage businesses to hire more staff in the coming months.

“When you get a cut, you get a little bit more confidence generally in the market, and that flows through into job creation,” he said. “The cut (on Tuesday) means that we would expect that to be probably a bit of a positive for job creation, but not an immediate kind of jump.”

The unemployment rate has remained at near historic levels despite the most aggressive uplift in interest rates this century from the RBA. It was 4 per cent in December and comes amid strong population growth.

Mr Narev, who previously ran Commonwealth Bank, cautioned that the impact of rate cuts is not immediate, as businesses take time to adjust their hiring decisions. Seek expected the market to be on par with the previous financial year by the time it enters the next one in July.

Seek boss Ian Narev says rate cuts generally lead to businesses looking to put more staff on. Picture: Daniel Munoz/AAP Image

“What we are assuming is that each of the coming months will still be quite a bit lower than the corresponding month last year, but actually will be roughly the same as the immediately previous month, other than normal seasonal fluctuations,” he said.

“Right now, the job market is a balanced market. From what we see with the number of applications per job and the feedback is that there’s a decent balance between people seeking the jobs and the people looking for work.”

The company has also revised its full-year guidance downward to reflect the challenging first half. It now expects revenue to be between $1.06bn and $1.1bn, a narrower range than the previous forecast of $1.02bn to $1.14bn. Adjusted profit is projected to fall between $135m and $160m, down from an earlier range of $130m to $180m.

Seek’s strong cash flow allows it to make strategic investments, but Mr Narev said the company remains selective and will only invest when the right opportunity arises.

“If there’s great opportunity, we’ll invest, and if there’s not, we won’t,” he said. “We’re always looking for things that make the core business bigger and stronger, but no immediate big things on the horizon.”

Seek continued to invest in artificial intelligence, seeing it as both a driver of efficiency and an enabler of more personalised jobs matching.

“This is just a continuous opportunity for us on both sides of the P&L,” Mr Narev said. “We want to grow our top line with the resources we’ve got. If we do this well, we can keep growing with the same cost base or similar to what we have today.”

RBA governor Michele Bullock is expected to cut interest rates on Tuesday. Picture: Oscar Colman/NewsWire

For the six months to December 31, Seek reported a 4 per cent contraction in revenue to $536.2m, driven by a sluggish jobs market in Australia and New Zealand. This led to a 28 per cent drop in adjusted profit to $77m.

Despite the weaker earnings, Seek lifted its interim dividend by 26 per cent to 24c a share, fully franked, for the six months to December compared to the previous year.

In a strategic move, Seek announced that the Seek Growth Fund had reached an agreement to sell part of its stake in HR and employment platform Employment Hero to funds managed by KKR. The deal will generate $95m, with Seek’s share of the proceeds amounting to approximately $79m.

Analysts at E&P Financial said while the result was slightly weaker than consensus, updated EBITDA guidance is in line, despite some shift of spend from capex to opex, adding that yield growth guidance upgraded is a higher quality outcome.

“The market will also like the Employment Hero selldown. Based on this, we’d expect the stock to be slightly up,” E&P Financial said.

Despite the challenges in the labour market, Mr Narev said the first-half performance was encouraging because of market share growth, improved yield, and demonstrated efficiency gains.

Shares in Seek were down by 0.2 per cent at $24.10 in a lower market. The company’s share price has rallied 9 per cent since the start of 2025, reversing sharp falls at the back end of last year of 20 per cent.

Originally published as Australia’s hiring outlook improves as Seek sees job ads stabilise before RBA interest rate call