There has been a decline in job advertisements for the fourth month in a row and Western Australia has been hit hardest.
As mining investment hits its peak and the boom slows down, job advertisements on the internet and in newspapers declined 1.8 per cent month-on-month in June.
This is after falling 2.5 per cent in May, seasonally adjusted, the latest ANZ Job Ads Survey revealed.
There were 129,720 job advertisements in June, down from 132,036 in May.
There were 784 job advertisements in Western Australia in June, down 6.2 per cent. There were 835 job advertisements in May, down 7.7 per cent from the previous month.
ANZ’s Australian Chief Economist Ivan Colhoun said the slump in job advertising have been reliable signs of lower interest rates and escalating unemployment.
“WA is now recording the sharpest trend decline in newspaper job advertisements of any state, with job advertising nearly 50 per cent lower than a year ago,” he said.
He expects the RBA will cut interest rates again in the next few months.
“ANZ expects a further interest rate cut in November this year and sees the balance of risks being for further interest rate reductions in 2014, notwithstanding the fact that a declining $A is now also providing useful stimulus to the Australian economy,” Colhoun said.
A host of mining companies have downgraded profits and slashed jobs recently including Downer, Deep Yellow, and Flinders Mines.
There are 130 jobs at risk at Apex Minerals' Wiluna mine as receivers visited the site last week to decide the next course of action on the loss-making gold production.
There were 1000 jobs cut in Queensland's coalfields recently, with job losses at Peabody, Hastings Deering, Ravensworth mine and Downer's BMA Goonyella Riverside mine.
ANZ's survey also showed newspaper advertisements in most non-mining states except Victoria increased.