Western Australia's employers are the most confident in the nation while job advertising remains as buoyant as ever, with several surveys released today showing the boom is still rolling on.
Western Australia's employers are the most confident in the nation while job advertising remains as buoyant as ever, with several surveys released today showing the boom is still rolling on.
More than 40 per cent of all Western Australian employers surveyed by recruitment firm Manpower Inc said they anticipated increasing their staff levels in the April-June quarter.
The seasonally adjusted rate of 43 per cent represents a rise of 8 per cent from the previous quarter and 15 per cent from the previous corresponding period, which the company said indicated a continuing demand in employers' hiring intentions.
WA has the the strongest demand for employees in the nation, followed by Queensland at 38 per cent.
Nationally, a net 31 per cent of bosses wanted to hire more staff in the second quarter compared with 20 per cent for the corresponding quarter of 2006.
This was the most positive result since the quarterly survey was first done in Australia in 2003.
National Australia Bank's monthly business survey found that business confidence was highest in Western Australia, while it improved in Queensland, Victoria and to a lesser extent NSW.
Business conditions edged up one point to 18 index points in February, returning to the record high achieved in October 2006.
While the number of advertisements in metropolitan newspapers nationally slipped by 2.5 per cent in February, Western Australia managed to withstand the slide, falling by only 0.1 per cent.
Nationally, the fall in print was compensated for by a rise in online job advertisments, accounting for a 3.4 per cent increase in total job advertisments for the month of February, averaging 216,621 new jobs a week.
ANZ's head of Australia economics, Tony Pearson, said a tight labour market could lead to wages pressure.
"The latest data certainly suggests there is little prospect of an easing in labour market conditions in sight, which will keep policy makers alert to the emergence of wages pressures," he said.
The central bank indicated last month that it is in no rush to raise interest rates further anytime soon, but is wary that a tight labour market could lift wages and reignite inflation pressures.
Still, the most recent wages data for the final three months of last year showed annual wages growth remains restrained around the four per cent mark, within the central bank's comfort zone.
Official labour force data for February is released on Thursday. Economists expect the unemployment rate to stay at its lowest level in over three decades at 4.5 per cent, with the economy adding a further 15,000 jobs.
