Job vacancies rip back
Job vacancies increased by +59.4 per cent in the August 2020 quarter to 206,000, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
In November 2018 vacancies ran as high as 230,000, so things aren't back to that level yet, but at least at the headline level this is a ringing endorsement of the government's stimulus packages.
At the state level it's clear that Queensland, Western Australia, and South Australia are benefitting very significantly from the stimulus, having brought the spread of the virus under control relatively early in the piece.
But clearly there's still a way to go for Sydney, and in particular Melbourne.
Job vacancies in Queensland and Western Australia are now at the highest levels since the peak of the resources boom in 2012.
In South Australia vacancies are at the highest level since all the way back in 2010.
At the industry level, construction, manufacturing, healthcare, accommodation and food, finance and insurance services, and retail trade all bounced significantly between May and August.
The survey says little about job quality, but at the headline level was a strong result.
The outlook
The labour force has actually shrunk by 200,000 since January, so interestingly 206,000 job vacancies implies that the unemployment rate could continue to decline from here, perhaps even back towards 5 per cent.
Of course, those persons could just as easily return to the labour force, so another (and perhaps better) way to look at this is that up until August there were still 922,000 unemployed persons, and only 206,000 job vacancies, which remains an elevated ratio of 4½.
Good progress, but evidently there's still a way to go in the two major capital cities.
Promising signs, though, for regional Australia and the secondary capitals.
