Data Flash (New Zealand)
NZ: ANZ Job Ads Survey (August 2001)

The number of job advertisements decreased by 2.4% in August from the record high recorded in July, However, the number of advertisements in August were still 4.3% higher than a year earlier.

The level of advertising seems broadly consistent with our forecast of 0.5% qoq employment growth in Q3, which would take the annual growth rate to 2.4%. The magnitude of the decline in August falls well within the usual monthly volatility - the standard deviation of monthly growth rates over the past seven years is over 4pps - so it is far too soon to be confident that job advertising has peaked.

That said, we expect a modest downtrend in job advertising levels to commence before year-end as firms seek to raise labour productivity, which has declined over the past year on an economy-wide basis.

Darren Gibbs, Senior Economist, New Zealand

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