Australia Job Advertisements Jump Most in Two Years
Written on December 8, 2009
Australian advertisements for job vacancies jumped in November by the most since May 2007, reinforcing central bank Governor Glenn Stevens’s decision to raise borrowing costs last week for an unprecedented third month.
Jobs advertised in newspapers and on the Internet gained 5.2 percent from October, according to an Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. report released in Melbourne today. Advertisements were 34.2 percent lower than a year earlier.
Demand led by China for raw materials including iron ore, coal and gas is stoking hiring at companies such as Chevron Corp., which is building Western Australia’s A$43 billion ($39 billion) Gorgon liquefied gas project. Signs that unemployment has peaked were among reasons Governor Stevens raised borrowing costs last week by a quarter-percentage point to 3.75 percent.
“Australia’s recovery from the recent downturn is gathering pace,” said Warren Hogan, chief economist at ANZ Bank in Sydney. “Eventually the improvements in job advertising will translate into higher employment growth.”
The Australian dollar rose to 91.47 U.S. cents at 11:33 a.m. in Sydney from 91.29 cents just before the report was released. The two-year government bond yield gained 1 basis points to 4.52 percent. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.
National vacancies advertised in newspapers and on the Internet averaged 140,658 a week last month, today’s report showed. Newspaper advertisements surged 8.3 percent to an average 9,530 a week. Internet notices gained 5 percent to 131,128.
Rate Outlook
Employers probably added 5,000 jobs last month, according to the median estimate of 22 economists surveyed by Bloomberg ahead of a Dec. 10 employment report.
Investors are betting there is a 56 percent chance of an increase at the central bank’s next meeting in February, according to Bloomberg calculations based on interbank futures on the Sydney Futures Exchange at 10:55 a.m.
Chevron on Dec. 5 signed an $82 billion contract, Australia’s largest energy deal, to supply liquefied natural gas to Tokyo Electric Power Co. from its Wheatstone field off the Western Australian coast. The project is expected to create 6,500 jobs during construction. That project is separate to the bigger Gorgon gas field.
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