Employers are still offering decent salaries to attract new recruits, but the slowing pace of growth in advertised pay provides further evidence of a cooling jobs market.
Advertised salaries as measured by employment marketplace Seek climbed 4.4 percent in the year to January.
While strong, the result was slightly below the 4.6 percent growth recorded in the 12 months to December.
The index, which measures the change in the advertised salaries on job postings over time, has now recorded two months in a row of slowing month-on-month growth.
Seek senior economist Matt Cowgill said the moderation in advertised salary growth aligned with other easing labour market indicators such as the unemployment rate and job ad volumes.
“However, the labour market is still very tight, just not as tight as it was a few months ago,” he said.
Like the wage growth captured in the Australian Bureau of Statistics wage price index last week, advertised salary growth is falling well behind the 7.8 percent inflation rate.
“That means real, inflation-adjusted advertised salaries are falling, adding to the cost-of-living squeeze on Australian workers,” he said.
Cowgill said the index showed advertised salaries were growing faster than peoples’ actual pay, highlighting that workers were likely to enjoy bigger pay bumps by switching jobs.
He said the findings and other recent wage indicators would help calm the Reserve Bank’s nervousness about a price-wage spiral, taking the pressure off its inflation-squashing regime.
Consumer spending patterns have been another source of uncertainty for the RBA as it hikes interest rates to return inflation to within its two-to-three percent target range.
ABS retail sales data, due on Tuesday, should offer insights into spending habits in light of elevated prices and higher interest rates.
NAB markets economist Taylor Nugent and his colleagues expect a bounce of two per cent month-on-month after a distorted softening in December.
This would imply relatively flat retail sales since October, he said.
Consumer confidence has been tracking well below average and returned another depressed result last week.
ANZ and Roy Morgan’s measure of consumer sentiment decreased slightly by 0.4 points to 80.
ANZ senior economist Adelaide Timbrell said it was the third consecutive week when confidence was among the worst 10 results since the COVID-19 outbreak in Australia.
“Confidence about current and future economic conditions are at their lowest level since November 2022, while current financial conditions were at its worst level since December 2022,” she said.
Confidence among those paying off a mortgage dropped by a notable 4.4 points to the lowest level since April 2020 as interest rate rises continue.
Also, on Tuesday, the December quarter balance of payments and January private sector credit data will be released.
