Australian job advertisements in newspapers and on the Internet fell for a second straight month in April in a sign firms are still cautious on hiring despite evidence of a revival in consumer demand. A survey by Australia and New Zealand Banking Group ANZ.AX showed total job advertisements fell a seasonally adjusted 1.3 percent in April. That followed an upwardly revised 0.5 percent decline in March, originally reported as a 1.5 percent drop.
Job ads of 136,470 were down 18.2 percent on April last year, but still up for the first four months of this year. Job ads on the Internet dipped 1.1 percent to 131,862, to be down 17.3 percent on the year. Newspaper ads fell 6.5 percent in April, extending a long-running shift toward online advertising. Analysts at ANZ cautioned that the timing of Easter holidays could have impacted ads over March and April.