That isn't the healthiest sign
Australian skilled vacancies fell 0.6% in today's Internet Vacancy Index report for September in a sign of a sluggish economy but equally troubling was the revision to the August data. It was initially reported at +0.6% but that was revised to -0.2%.
With the revision, that makes it six straight months of job vacancy declines.
To be sure, the dip comes after a very strong run in 2017 and early 2018 but it sends conflicting signals about the jobs market after unemployment surprisingly fell to 5.0% from 5.3% in the latest jobs report.
Will it change policy?
Not likely. The RBA has been in a very good mood in recent speeches and earlier this month, RBA Deputy Debelle specifically downplayed this series.
"This, in part, reflects changes in the way that businesses recruit and workers search for jobs," he said.
"For example, the job advertisements data capture the main online recruitment websites, but they are not picking up newer recruitment sites or the use of social media sites, such as LinkedIn, so the usefulness of this series may be declining," he said.
