Jobs and Skills Australia’s suggests that the labour market remained tight in November 2022, with key indicators remaining steady and at almost historically high levels over the month.
Recruitment activity remained high but stable at 58%, matching the last two months, but 8 percentage points higher than a year ago. Medium-to-large businesses had a notable jump in their recruitment rate over the month, from 77% to 86%.
The recruitment difficulty rate eased slightly by 1 percentage point to 69% of recruiting employers (representing 40% of all employers).
November’s data shows that 30% of employers expected to increase staff over the next 3 months. This was slightly below October’s respective figure of 31%. Meanwhile, 5% of employers expected to decrease staffing levels over the next 3 months, up from 2% last month.
Of employers who recently filled vacancies, 44% hired at least one jobless applicant in their most recent recruitment round. The remaining employers hired applicants who were already employed.
Employers were most likely to hire jobless applicants in the Accommodation and Food Services (69%) and Retail Trade (55%) industries, or when recruiting for labourers (67%) or sales workers (58%).
