Virus sees vacancies slump 50%

JOB advertisements were down by 50 per cent in North Queensland during the strictest phase of the global pandemic restrictions.

According to Seek data, ad volumes dropped by 22 per cent over February to April compared to the same time last year in the region.

Weekly breakdowns of Seek advertisements analysed by human resource and recruitment organisation TP Human Capital recorded a more than 50 per cent decline in overall vacancies for Townsville in the last week of May this year in comparison to 2019.

There were 1200 job vacancies available on Seek last year in the last week of May in comparison to 575 in 2020. New job ads dropped from 377 in 2019 to 181 this year for that same week in May.

TP Human Capital managing director Clayton Cook said ads for high turnover industries such as hospitality were some of the most adversely impacted by the pandemic.

“We were roughly sitting around 1200 jobs at any one time online with Seek for Townsville in a couple of months before COVID hit, he said.

“There are lower job adverts in the months of June compared to the previous year.”

Mr Cook said the timing of the lifting of restrictions would also affect when some businesses could begin to hire staff.

“A lot of business will be trying to get restarted again and their first preference will be to re-engage the employees that have been stood down and whether they’re receiving a JobSeeker or Jobkeeper payment, the initial priority will be trying to get back the workers they had previously,” he said.

“Once we know how many of the previous employees they could re-engage I think that will tell us where businesses are in terms of their demand of needing to find new staff.

“The economy will take a little bit to recover. There would be more people looking for work and whenever there’s a greater supply of people and less demand there’s more competition for the available job.”