Despite the increase in private-sector hiring in Australia, some sectors still face labour shortages.
As per the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Job vacancies in Australia in August 2022 (4,71,00) decreased by 10,000 compared to May 2022. But the data also revealed that the number of vacancies in Australia in August 2022 was 41% more compared to August 2021 (3,34,000) when the labour market had its impact due to Covid-19 that hit the world, which led to travel restrictions across the globe.
Public sector hiring decreased the job vacancies in Australia by 3% over the last three months to August 2022. Simultaneously, public sector vacancies in Australia rose by 11%.
Lauren Ford, head of Labor Statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), said: “The number of job vacancies declined by 2% over the three months to August 2022, although remained elevated in historical terms and are still more than double pre-pandemic levels.”
Ms. Ford said. “The large growth in vacancies through the pandemic has coincided with a decline in the number of unemployed people. As a result, there were a similar number of unemployed people (488,000) to job vacancies (471,000) in August 2022, compared with three times as many unemployed people to vacancies before the start of the pandemic,”
The official said that even though there was a quarterly decrease in job vacancies, some sectors in Australia are still facing labour shortages.
Ms. Ford said. “Despite the overall quarterly decrease, the number of job vacancies continued to increase in some industries, such as retail trade (up 15 percent) and Accommodation and food services (up 14 percent). This reflected ongoing labour shortages in a tight labour market, particularly in customer-facing industries,”
Job Openings in Australia
State Wise Decrease in Job Openings: Job vacancies in Tasmania over the quarter were down by 17%, followed by Western Australia (down by 7%)
State Wise Increase in Job Openings: Job vacancy growth over the quarter in Queensland is up by 9%, followed by Victoria (up by 5%).
Industry-wise job openings: Construction job vacancies over the quarter decreased by 16%, followed by education and training (down by 12%). Industries with increased job vacancies were transport, postal and warehousing (up by 17%) and retail trade ( up by 15%).
