The number of job advertisements in Australia has fallen for the third successive month in yet another sign the economy is slowing, a survey shows.
Newspaper and internet job ads fell by a seasonally adjusted 0.3 per cent in July to 261,936 a week, but were up 5.5
per cent in the year, the ANZ job ads survey shows.
Jobs advertised in newspapers dived by 5.1 per cent to 15,739 last month while internet ads were flat at 246,197.
ANZ head of economics Warren Hogan said jobs growth was likely to slow in coming months, and predicted the jobless rate would climb to 4.9 per cent by June 2009, up from 4.2 per cent in June 2008.
"The overall trend in job advertisements continues to weaken, indicative of a softening in hiring intentions across Australia in 2008," he said.
"The level of job advertisements remains at high levels, particularly internet ads, and in July the overall rate of decline has slowed.
"However, recent trends in job advertisements suggest that we will see an easing of employment growth in coming quarters, consistent with the slowing in domestic conditions in Australia over the first half of 2008."
Economists expect the unemployment rate for July to edge up to 4.3 per cent, when the Australian Bureau of Statistics releases labour force data on Thursday.
The ANZ series showed that in the year to July, newspaper job ads had fallen by 21.7 per cent but internet employment advertisements had grown by 7.9 per cent.
The tally of newspaper and internet job ads in July was 5.5 per cent stronger than a year earlier.
The latest ANZ series showed the decline in newspaper jobs ads was the highest in South Australia, where there was a 9.7 per cent slump.
This was followed by Victoria's 8.6 per cent slide, with declines also recorded in Western Australia (down 6.6 per cent), Queensland (down 5.2 per cent), New South Wales (down two per cent) and the Northern Territory (down 1.4 per cent).
Conversely, Australian Capital Territory newspaper ads climbed by 4.2 per cent, followed by Tasmania's one per cent increase.
- AAP
