ANZ Job Advertisements MoM

ANZ-Indeed Australian Job Ads is a monthly count of advertised vacancies in Australia. ANZ Research publishes it with data partner Indeed, an employment website at au.indeed.com. Its history runs back to 1975, with newspaper ads from 1975 to 2018 and job-board ads from 1999 onward. It was called ANZ Australian Job Ads before the March 2023 release renamed it.

It tracks advertised labour demand, not employment, unemployment, or hiring. It is not the quarterly ABS Job Vacancies survey, an employer survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It is a census-style count of ads on participating sites, not a sampled survey, with no stated sample size.

Each site counts ads on the same weekday each week, and the release uses the monthly average. ANZ publishes results early in the next month, usually on the first Monday under embargo until 11:30am Sydney time. Public holidays can shift the date, and each release names the next release date.

Each release shows seasonally adjusted month-on-month and year-on-year percent changes plus trend values. It shows index levels with the 2019 average equal to 100, charts against unemployment and employment, state and occupation commentary, and a methods appendix. Seasonal factors are re-estimated each month, so past readings can revise. Markets read the direction of change and the level, since ads lead hiring.

Movements reflect combined counts from job boards and historic newspaper ads, with no published weights. Strength follows labour demand, which later appears in employment growth and the unemployment rate.

• Indeed, 2018 onward: online job postings from au.indeed.com, the reason for the 2023 rename.

• Workforce Australia, 1999 onward: government job-board postings and earlier versions since 1999, run by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations.

• SEEK, 1999 to 2022: commercial job-board postings, with input ending in September 2022.

• Newspaper job ads, 1975 to 2018: classified bookings only, excluding display ads, where one booking can hold many ads.

The February 4, 2019 release for January reported 171,392 ads a week on a seasonally adjusted basis. Ads fell 1.7% from the prior month and 3.7% from the prior year, the first annual fall since April 2015. Trend ads fell 0.5% for the 8th straight month and 0.7% from the prior year, the first such fall since August 2014.

ANZ still said the level supported ongoing employment growth because employment lags ads. Other signals such as ABS vacancies data painted a more positive picture at the same time.

1. Original level: For each site, count ads on the same weekday each week and take the monthly average. For illustration, weekly counts of 148,000, 152,000, 150,000 and 150,000 give an Original of 150,000.

1. Index: Divide Original by the 2019 average and multiply by 100, so the 2019 average equals 100. For illustration, 150,000 divided by 200,000 gives 75.0.

1. Seasonally adjusted index: Remove regular seasonal effects using X-11 ARIMA. For illustration, 75.0 divided by seasonal factor 0.95 gives 78.9.

1. Trend: Smooth the seasonally adjusted series to show the underlying path. Older releases used a 13-term Henderson moving average, which revises the latest 6 months.

1. Percent changes: Month-on-month divides the gap to the prior month by prior value, times 100. Year-on-year does the same against the same month 12 months earlier. For illustration, (78.9 minus 81.0) divided by 81.0 times 100 equals -2.6%.