Retail vacancies have lifted by 4,000 to 38,500 over the last quarter to August 2023, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data revealed.
Percentage-wise, retail saw the largest increase of 19% from May 2023.
However, this is down by 8,000 on the same time last year, with August 2022 hitting 46,100 retail vacancies.
A peak in retail vacancies is expected in the next quarter to November 2023, with last year’s November quarter hitting 49,900 before dropping by over 10,000 in the new year.
Despite the lower amount of vacancies in retail this year compared to last year, approximately 28.1% of retail businesses reported having vacancies in August 2023, up from 23.8% at the same time last year.
Australian Retailers Association (ARA) CEO Paul Zahra welcomed the year-on-year decline, but said this highlights a reduction in job investments due to challenging trade and rising costs.
“The number of vacancies is still somewhat problematic heading into the all-important Christmas trading period, but we fear the main cause of the decline is due to the cost-of-doing-business crisis,” ARA CEO Paul Zahra said.
“With increasing costs of wages, rent, insurance, utilities, materials and supply chain costs, some retailers are battling to avoid making redundancies – let alone hiring additional staff.
“Many retailers – particularly smaller discretionary retailers – are struggling to survive financially and aren’t able to hire staff.
“The 38,500 retail vacancies remaining would likely be retailers who are still seeing somewhat stable performance – and they’re still struggling to fill those roles.”
Zahra added that while vacancies have reduced, more businesses are facing impacts which is likely due to a skills shortage.
Across all business sectors, there were 390,000 job vacancies in August 2023, down 38,000 from May. This is a 9% drop from May and an 18% drop from the peak in May 2022.
ABS head of labour statistics Kate Lamb said demand for workers eased again in August for the fifth straight quarter, coinciding with an increase in the unemployment rate over the three months to August.
“While these indicators are no longer at historical levels, both are still showing that the labour market is tighter than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic,” Lamb said.
“Job vacancies were still around 72% higher than they were in February 2020. That’s still around 160,000 more jobs that employers are looking for people to fill, as part of a pool of almost 400,000 vacancies.
“The percentage of businesses reporting at least one vacancy also fell from 25 per cent in May to 22 per cent in August. However, this was still double what it was in February 2020 at 11 per cent.”
Job vacancies in both public and private sectors declined over the three months to August. Public sector vacancies fell by 3,000 while the private sector fell by 35,000.
The Australian Capital Territory saw the largest percentage drop in job vacancies, of negative 8%, while Queensland was the only state to see growth, up 4%.
Financial and insurance services showed the largest drop in job vacancies at minus 15% this quarter. This is also the only industry to now have vacancies lower than they were in February 2020.