Seek expects further moderation in employment as job ads dive 20pc in the year to November

More Australians will be out of work next year as the flow on effects from the Reserve Bank’s rate hikes hit, with one industry seeing a sharp downturn.

More Australians are set to lose their jobs and fewer employers will look to recruit staff in the year ahead as the flow on effect from the Reserve Bank’s aggressive run of rate rises, along with high inflation, further slows the economy.

Online employment company Seek forecasts further moderation after the number of job ads fell 4.3 per cent from October to November. Job ads are now 20.2 per cent lower year-on-year as NSW and Victoria feel the force of a slowdown in the professional services sector, which is seeing fewer consultants and IT workers hired.

Employment ads however remained 13.6 per cent higher than November 2019 in a sign that the labour market remained robust in a post-pandemic world.

Seek senior economist Matt Cowgill said Australia was seeing a return to normal conditions, with the number of applicants per ad now the same as February 2020.

“We’ve come off a very high benchmark with the great jobs boom we saw post pandemic. There is slowing demand with the need to hire more staff, but in all the things continue to remain strong,” he said.

More Australians are set to lose their jobs and fewer employers will look to recruit staff in the year ahead. Picture: Sarah Marshall/NewsWire

The increase in the number of applicants follows a record run for immigration into Australia, which has surpassed 500,000 arrivals for the year.

It comes as the Australian Bureau of Statistics will release labour data for November this morning which market forecast for unemployment to increase from 3.7 per cent to 3.8 per cent and 11,000 new jobs to be added compared to 55,000 in October.

Mr Cowgill said that fewer people will get a job in 2024 as the unemployment rate slowly increased from a 50-year low of 3.4 per cent in October.

“The fall in jobs ads is often an early indicator of where the labour market is heading. We do expect employment growth to slow and unemployment rate to rise along the lines of what the RBA is forecasting.”

The RBA has forecasted unemployment to reach 3.75 per cent by year’s end and 4 per cent by June.

Consulting and strategy had the biggest fall in November, down by 18.7 per cent, followed by a 7.9 per cent drop in retail and consumer products as an increasing number of households have a shrinking amount of disposable income.

“Consulting jobs are lower due to softer demand that could spring from governments of all levels really trying to cut back on the amount of work that is being outsourced,” Mr Cowgill said.

“This slowdown is really impacting Sydney and Melbourne, where most of this work is concentrated.”

NSW led the monthly fall in job ads, down 7.1 per cent, the largest decline for the state in over two years, while Victoria eased 6.3 per cent. The ACT — home to the country’s public servants — saw no change in the labour market, and South Australia lifted 0.2 per cent.

Aside from insurance and superannuation, which rose 5.8 per cent, every other industry in the state recorded falling job ad numbers.