Job recruitment off the boil as isolation cools ardour

Sydney’s lockdown has triggered a 10 per cent decline in recruitment activity in NSW, as the number of new jobs advertised online fell 3 per cent nationally in July.

Recruitment activity eased in July, as Sydney’s lockdown drove a 10 per cent drop in new NSW job ads. Picture: AAP

Sydney’s lockdown has triggered a 10 per cent decline in recruitment activity in NSW, as the number of new jobs advertised online fell 3 per cent nationally in July.

The National Skills Commission reported 7200 fewer job ads in the month – the second consecutive national decline after a post-recession surge that pushed recruitment activity to a 12-year high in May.

With Greater Sydney residents under stay-at-home orders for all of July, the commission’s Internet Vacancy Index revealed NSW employers advertised for 70,400 new roles in July, or 8100 fewer than in June.

The only state to record a lift in recruitment activity was Victoria, where businesses advertised for 63,900 new jobs – an increase of 2400, or 3.9 per cent, on June despite the state entering its fifth, brief, lockdown from mid-July.

Despite the decline, the 232,600 newly advertised positions in July were still nearly 40 per cent up on pre-pandemic levels, and 72 per cent up on a year earlier, suggesting demand for ­labour remained strong in July.

In NSW, the number of new job ads remained 20 per cent higher than pre-crisis levels.

The next largest monthly fall after NSW was in the Northern Territory, where new job ads fell by 5.2 per cent in July versus the previous month, a drop of 140 roles, and in South Australia, which recorded a fall of 4.5 per cent, or 570 jobs.

Economists expect unemployment will tick higher in coming months as a result of Covid-19 restrictions aimed at controlling Delta outbreaks along the east coast.

Data from online jobs portal Seek from June revealed application numbers per listed role were close to their lowest since 2012 – a further sign that employers are struggling to find workers.

Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe this week expressed confidence the economy would follow the precedent of the past 18 months and bounce back strongly into the end of the year once Sydney’s lockdown was eased.

Dr Lowe was confident labour shortages leading into the recent outbreaks would inspire businesses to hang on to workers despite disruptions leading to one in five hospitality workers in NSW being stood down over the two weeks to July 18.

Josh Frydenberg in federal parliament on Monday said about one million Australians who lost hours as a result of Delta lockdowns had received $2bn in income support via the commonwealth’s Covid disaster relief payment scheme, with 700,000 of those recipients in NSW.

The Skills Commission’s internet vacancy index counts online job advertisements newly lodged on Seek, CareerOne and Aus­tralian JobSearch during the month.

ANZ’s job ads series, which measures the stock of ads rather than the number of new vacancies, recorded a slight decline in July but was still 35 per cent up on pre-Covid levels.

The unemployment rate was recorded at 4.9 per cent in June.