Number of job ads continues to fall

The pressure on New Zealand's labour market is continuing to increase, with the number of job advertisements falling for three months in a row.

Seek NZ's employment report for October shows a 1 percent drop in the total number of ads, following declines in September and August, and just a 3 percent rise in July.

Apart from growth in July, job ad volumes were down 26 percent on the year earlier.

"The labour market remains challenging as ad volumes continue to decline and the unemployment rate is still climbing," Seek country manager Rob Clark said.

"While trending downward, the recent declines in job ads have been smaller compared to the preceding 12 months."

But there were variations in job ad volumes across industries and regions.

Auckland was down 2 percent month-on-month, while Canterbury dropped 2 percent, following a 6 percent increase in September.

Wellington saw 3 percent growth in October, but was still down 33 percent on the year earlier.

"(Wellington) has been up for a little while. In particular, government roles up 15 percent and that's the third straight month. So some recovery there," Clark said.

"Places like Otago up 5 percent and that might be a result of the fact that we're seeing hospitality and tourism roles grow."

Clark said jobs ads for hospitality and tourism roles rose 8 percent last month and 37 percent on the year earlier, as the peak holiday season approached.

But he said other industry sectors were not seeing the same volume of growth.

"A little difficult to sort of look any further than that from a seasonal perspective. You've still got some challenges in areas like healthcare, which was down 6 percent and obviously they're going through quite some change at the moment. So I would say, still very bouncy at this stage."

All industries - apart from farming, animals and conservation - recorded a year-on-year increase in the number of applications per job ad.

Those attracting the most applications included retail & consumer products (+108 percent) communications services & development (+96 percent), call centre and customer services (+87 percent) and insurance and superannuation (+85 percent).

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