Job vacancies in Australia still up 40% in a year despite strong hiring

Job vacancies in Australia eased in the August quarter but vacancies were also more than double what they were prior to the pandemic. There were 471,000 job vacancies in August 2022, a decrease of 10,000 from May 2022, according to new seasonally adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). But the data showed that number of job vacancies in Australia in August 2022 was 41% than August last year (334,000), when the labour market was impacted by the Delta wave lockdowns.

Strong hiring by the private sector helped to bring down the job vacancies in Australia, which decreased by 3 per cent over the three months to August 2022. At the same time, public sector vacancies increased by 11 per cent. 

Lauren Ford, head of Labour Statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 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.”

“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,” Ms Ford said.

The official said that despite the quarterly dip in job vacancies, some sectors in Australia continued to face labour shortage. 

“Despite the overall quarterly decrease, the number of job vacancies continued to increase in some industries, such as retail trade (up 15 per cent) and Accommodation and food services (up 14 per cent). This reflected ongoing labour shortages in a tight labour market, particularly in customer facing industries,” Ms Ford said.

Job Openings in Australia

Statewise, the largest quarterly percentage decline in job vacancies was in Tasmania (down 17 per cent) and Western Australia (down 7 per cent). On the other hand, the largest job vacancy percentage growth was in Queensland (up 9 per cent), followed by Victoria (up 5 per cent).

Within industries, the largest percentage decrease in vacancies over the quarter were construction (16 per cent) and education and training (12 per cent). The industries with the highest percentage growth were transport, postal and warehousing (17 per cent) and Retail trade (15 per cent).