6 January 2003, 08:27  Australia December Job Advertisements Fall 13.7% to 6-Year Low

/www.bloomberg.com/ By Victoria Batchelor
Sydney, Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Australian job advertisements fell to a six-year low in December, signaling the labor market will weaken in coming months, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. said.
The number of job vacancies advertised in the country's major newspapers dropped 13.7 percent last month from November to an average 19,032 a week, the bank said in its monthly report. That's the lowest since December 1996 and 2.4 percent below the level a year earlier.
Taken at face value, the drop in job advertising points ``to a significant slowing in employment growth during the first few months of 2003,'' Saul Eslake, chief economist at ANZ, said in a statement.
``It would have been unrealistic to have expected employment to continue growing at the nearly 20,000-per-month rate recorded over the six months to November, given the downward revisions to forecasts for economic growth,'' he said.
In December, the Reserve Bank of Australia cut its forecast for economic growth in the year ending June 30 to 3 percent, from an earlier forecast of as much as 4 percent. That's because the worst drought in a century has cut farm production and a global slowdown has crimped export earnings.
The decline in jobs advertisements in December was the fourth- largest drop in the 27-year history of the ANZ Bank report.
Still, ``the magnitude of the decline appears to give an exaggerated impression of the extent of any slowing in employment,'' Eslake said.
``Given the inherent volatility in this series over the summer holiday period, it would seem sensible to suspend judgment until the release of January data.''
In Australia, Christmas and the summer holidays mean that job advertisements typically decline in December.
The economy added 60,400 jobs in November, about three times economists' expectations, according to the latest government figures. The unemployment rate was 6.1 percent, close to a two-year low.
The number of job advertisements on the Internet fell 2.8 percent in December, according to the job advertisements report. The Internet figures aren't seasonally adjusted.

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