Job vacancies in the retail industry have fallen from 37,200 in November 2023 to 32,100 in February 2024.
This joins an overall decline of 24,000 jobs across all industries over the last quarter to 364,000 vacancies, according to new figures from Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the number of job vacancies fell by 6.1 per cent over the last quarter.
“The drop in February followed a small fall of 0.8 per cent in November 2023 and was the seventh quarterly drop in a row,” Jarvis said.
“Job vacancies are now 23.5 per cent lower than they were at their peak in May 2022. However, they remain well above the pre-COVID-19 pandemic level and are still 59.8 per cent higher than February 2020, or around 136,000 more vacancies.
“The latest Labour Account data also showed that job vacancies continue to make up a much higher proportion of jobs in the labour market than we would typically see. In the December quarter 2023, they were 2.4 per cent of all jobs, compared with around 1.6 per cent during 2019.”
The decline in job vacancies was seen across many industries. The strongest quarterly percentage falls were in Arts and recreation services (down 33.2 per cent) and Public administration and safety (down 20.2 per cent).
Some industries recorded growth in job vacancies, with strong rises in Rental, hiring and real estate (20.7 per cent) and Financial and insurance services (17.9 per cent).
According to the ABS, job vacancies in many industries remained high compared with pre-pandemic levels. This continued to be particularly pronounced in customer-facing industries, including Arts and recreation services, and Accommodation and food services.
There were also falls in job vacancies in most states and territories over the last quarter, with Queensland recording the largest percentage drop of 11.1 per cent, followed by New South Wales (down 10.0 per cent). The largest rise was in South Australia, up 8 per cent.