Australia sees more jobs vacancies than before the pandemic

This was according to new seasonally adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) which also revealed that the number of job vacancies in February 2022 was 27,000 more than in November 2021.

Bjorn Jarvis, head of Labour Statistics at the ABS, said: “Job vacancies continued to reach new record highs through the pandemic. The number of job vacancies in February 2022 was 7% higher than in November 2021, when many businesses were emerging from the Delta lockdowns. There were around an extra 200,000 job vacancies than in February 2020 – around 86% higher.

“The high number of vacancies shows the strong demand for workers across the economy, as businesses are responding to disruptions to operations, together with labour shortages across the economy.”

Jarvis said, “In addition to a higher number of vacancies, the percentage of businesses reporting at least one vacancy also rose, from 21% in November 2021 to 24% in February 2022. This was more than double (of that in) February 2020 (11%)”.

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Job vacancies were much higher than before the pandemic in all industries. Industries with the highest growth in vacancies over the past two years were accommodation and food services (213%), arts and recreation services (211%), and rental, hiring and real estate services (191%) – all of which are customer-facing industries for which employment and hours have been particularly impacted during the pandemic.