Jobs Online

Jobs Online quarterly release

Overview of key trends

• Online job advertising continued to fall in the December 2023 quarter (down 6.9%) and over the year to December 2023 (down 28.6%). However, firms are stating that they intend to hire more people (as measured by ANZ Business Outlook).
• Online job advertising fell for all industries apart from Education over the quarter to December 2023. The biggest falls were in the Primary and IT industries.
• Jobs advertised for all occupation groups also fell with the biggest quarterly falls in the Clerical & administration and Machinery operators & drivers occupation groups.
• Jobs advertised online declined across all 5 skill levels compared to the previous quarter. Low-skilled jobs saw the biggest fall, down 9.5%.
• Compared to the previous quarter, online job advertisements decreased in all regions. The Wellington region saw the biggest fall in online advertising while Gisborne/Hawke’s Bay saw the smallest fall due to growth in the IT, Healthcare and Primary industries in that region.

• About Jobs Online

  This report highlights the latest Jobs Online data up to June 2023. Jobs Online monitors changes in an index of online job advertisements, not the number of actual online job advertisements. It uses information from online job advertisements from 4 internet job boards: SEEK, Trade Me Jobs, the Education Gazeze and Kiwi Health Jobs.

  Comparisons have been made between June 2023 and the previous quarter (March 2023) and with the previous year (June 2022).

  Online job advertisements are a proxy for all job advertisements as there are other forms of advertising. Online job advertisements are also a proxy for job vacancies, a key indicator of labour demand, as some vacancies are not advertised. Duplicate advertisements within each job board, across job boards and months are removed.

  The relationship between online job advertisements and labour demand is complex, particularly when disaggregated at an industry, occupation and regional level. For example, an increase in job advertisements in a particular industry may indicate the industry is expanding, and looking for new workers, or the industry has a high rate of turnover or churn (workers are moving between businesses, but overall employment is not necessarily increasing). Likewise, a decline in online job advertisements can signal reduced employment in an industry, or that the industry is using alternatives to online advertising in their hiring processes (such as word-of-mouth or social networks). Alternatively, a decline in online advertisements may signal an industry has less turnover than before.

• This report uses the All Vacancies Index (AVI) to measure changes. The AVI is calculated by using raw unweighted data from the 4 internet job boards mentioned above. Comparisons using the AVI can be distorted by small numbers of online job advertisements.

  With these caveats in mind, data from Jobs Online tracks well in terms of the direction of change of other labour market indicators, such as the unemployment rate.

  The monthly unadjusted vacancies from May 2007 to June 2023 are now published online: Jobs Online monthly unadjusted data. This data shows the monthly patterns of online job advertising.