Around one in every thirty jobs (3.2%) were vacant in the September quarter - a record high - with many industries such as retail seeing a doubling of vacant jobs since March 2020. This is according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Retail job vacancies doubled from 1.5% in March 2020 to 3.0% in September 2022. However, the most prominent growth in jobs is seen in both accommodation and food services and arts and recreation services. The former grew to 5.1% in the September 2022, up from 1.2% pre-pandemic, with arts and recreation growing from 0.9% pre-pandemic to 2.5%.
ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the rate of job vacancies, which was 1.6% pre-pandemic, is now almost in line with the unemployment rate of 3.5%.
“These two measures are useful to track together, along with underemployment, to understand both supply and demand in this particularly tight labour market,” Jarvis said.
Quarterly growth in jobs and hours worked slowed in the September quarter, with filled jobs increasing slightly (up 0.2%) and hours worked remaining flat.
“The rate of multiple job holding increased by less than 0.1 percentage point to 6.5 per cent, another series high,” Jarvis said. “The increase from around 5.9 per cent before the pandemic highlights that people are now more likely to be working more than one job.”
ABS noted that while hours worked were largely unchanged across the whole economy, there continued to be variation at the industry level. Hours worked increased during the quarter in 11 of the 19 industries, and fell in the remaining 8 industries.
Hours worked in retail trade remained unchanged at a drop of 0.1% since December 2021, while wholesale trade grew by 15.3% and manufacturing dropped by 5%.
Accommodation and food serves as well as arts and recreation saw the largest increases of 23.3% and 23% respectively.