Job ads bounce at last
Job ads jumped by a record +42 per cent in June 2020, dwarfing the previous record increase of +18 per cent back in early 2010.
It can be all too easy to be fooled by nerds bearing statistics, though - especially when it comes to sequencing! - and thus it's important to remember that job ads are still -45 per cent lower than a year earlier.
The apparently massive +42 per cent increase is much easier to visualise in a chart:
A seasonally adjusted 89,000 ads is much better than 63,000, for sure, but it's also way down from the cyclical peak of 183,000 in mid-2018.
The good news is that this may mean the unemployment rate goes little higher than the current 7.1 per cent in this cycle...maybe!
SEEK's figures showed that hiring activity in hospitality and tourism is now on the increase, which is heartening news.
Total employment has fallen from around 13 million to 12 million this year, so after accounting for changes in the participation rate there has been a dramatic impact which will take time to recover from.
This looks especially likely to be the case in Victoria, where all of a sudden there are some 645 active cases of COVID-19, with today representing the worst 24 hours on record for the state.
All other states and territories have seen zero community transmission cases this week, with only a few returning travellers testing positive in quarantine.
But Victoria has sustained a number of different outbreaks, at abattoirs and elsewhere, albeit from a very high level of testing now, and New South Wales has accordingly closed its borders to Victorians.
There are four Victorian cases in ICU, and there have been 22 deaths in total since the beginning of the year.
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Elsewhere I've been commissioned to do some work on the impact of the September fiscal cliff and the end of repayment holidays for residential mortgages and other commercial loans.
There's not much room on a personal daily blog for detailed findings, but I might be able to post a few bits and pieces here.
