Job advertisements in Australia surged in May, up 2.4 percent, according to figures released by ANZ on Monday.
Ads were also up 9.1 percent on the year to May. The number of job ads online in May rose 2.6 percent, while those in newspapers fell by 12.6 percent. "After six months of broadly flat job ads, the strong rise in ads in May is encouraging," ANZ head of Australian economics Felicity Emmett, said.
"Despite some ongoing headwinds, the economy is tracking along quite well and the transition to non-mining activity is occurring. " Emmett noted the rise in job ads was consistent with the strength in business conditions, which pointed to ongoing solid growth in the economy.
"Last week's strong Q1 (March quarter) GDP (gross domestic product) report shows that the non-mining economy is gaining traction, with housing and the services sector key drivers of this strength," she said.
"These sectors are also clearly helping to support jobs growth. " She said however that despite the recovery in activity, wages growth remained low. "Ongoing weak wage growth has helped to support solid employment gains over the past year or so and is likely to continue to do so," Emmett said.
"But very low growth in labor costs is feeding through to very low inflation." Emmett noted that with inflation set to stay outside the Reserve Bank of Australia's target band until at least mid-2017, she expects to see another cut in the cash rate in August to a low of 1.5 percent.
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