SEEK Employment Report February

*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to January data.

• After a notable rise in January, in February job ads dropped 1.8% m/m.

• With ad volumes down just 7.5% y/y, this is the most stable the market has been since pre-COVID.

• All states and territories recorded job ad decline m/m aside from Western Australia (0.4%).

• After recording the largest m/m rise in January, ad volumes in South Australia fell the fastest in February (-4.4%).

• Most industries contributed to job ad decline in February, notably Trades & Services (-3.9%) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (-3.4%).

• Community Services & Development (0.9%) and Administration & Office Support (0.4%) were among the few industries to record volume growth m/m. 

“After job ads grew in January with large increases in the Industrial and Construction sectors, the opposite was true in February as those sectors led a decline. 

“This is consistent with January becoming an increasingly strong month for job ad volumes in recent years.

“There were some pockets of opportunity in February with job ad volumes rising in Community Services & Development and Administration & Office Support. 

“Western Australia experienced strong demand in essential industries in February, with Construction rising 7.1% and Healthcare & Medical increasing by 5.0%.” 

After a notable jump in volumes in January, job ads fell 1.8% in February. Ad volumes declined to a larger degree in the regions (-3.8%) compared to the urban centres (-1.5%).

While all states and territories – apart from Western Australia – contributed to the national decline, New South Wales (-2.4%), Queensland (-1.8%) and Victoria (-1.8%) were the largest contributors to the fall in job ad volumes. 

After declining the previous two months, applications per job ad rose 0.8% in January and remain extremely elevated in comparison to pre-COVID norms. 

Figure 1: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m (February 2024 to February 2025) 

Western Australia is the only stateor territory where ad volumes increased in February, up 0.4% m/m after an 8.3% jump in January. In February, the rise was led largely by rising demand for Construction (7.1%) and Healthcare & Medical (5.0%) workers. 

South Australia recorded the largest monthly decline in ad volumes in February, down 4.4%, marked by a 22.6% drop in Retail & Consumer Products. 

Of the larger states, Victoria has recorded the largest decline in ad volume over the past year, down 12.2% y/y, with significant drops in demand for workers in Education & Training (-23.3%), Healthcare & Medical (-19.1%) and Accounting (-19.1%). 

The rise in applications per job ad in January was driven by an 11% jump in applications per ad levels in Tasmania and a 1% increase in New South Wales. All other states and territories recorded declining levels, including a 6% drop in South Australia and a 3% fall in Queensland. 

Figure 2: State and territory job ad decline comparing i) February 2025 to January 2025 (m/m) and ii) February 2025 to February 2024 (y/y).

Figure 3: Major state job ad trends: February 2021 to February 2025.

After recording significant rises in ad volume in January, declining demand for workers in two of the largest industries by ad volume – Trades & Services (-3.9%) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (-3.4%) – led the overall decline m/m. 

Aside from the relatively small industry of Advertising, Arts & Media (-9.7%), Retail & Consumer Products (-4.9%) recorded the largest drop in ad volumes for the month. 

There were some pockets of growth in February, notably in Community Services & Development (0.9% m/m), Administration & Office Support (0.4% m/m) and Sport & Recreation (2.8% m/m) among other industries. 

Taking a quarterly view, almost all industries have declined q/q, with the largest being Education & Training (-10%), Government & Defence (-8%) and Hospitality & Tourism (-6%). In the case of the former, Primary Teachers (-19%) and School Management positions (-13%) have dropped to the largest extent. 

In January, applications per job ad rose for almost as many industries as it declined, with the largest drop in Real Estate & Property (-9%) and Call Centre & Customer Service (-7%). 

The overall increase of 0.8% in applications per ad in January was driven by the larger industries of Trades & Services (1%) and Healthcare & Medical (2%). Other smaller industries also contributed to this increase with Government & Defence (9%) and Legal (6%) seeing the largest growth for the month. 

Figure 4: National SEEK job ad percentage change by industry (February 2025 vs January 2025) – Ordered by job ad volume

ENDS

The data for this report can be downloaded here. 

ABOUT THE SEEK EMPLOYMENT REPORT

The SEEK Employment Report is Australia’s leading employment index and provides a comprehensive overview of the Australian Employment Marketplace. The report includes the SEEK Employment Index (SEI) which measures only new job ads posted within the reported month to provide a clean measure of demand for labour across all classifications.

NOTES

(1) The SEI may differ to the job ad count on SEEK’s website due to a number of factors including: a) seasonal adjustments applied to the SEI; b) the exclusion of duplicated job ads from the SEI; and c) the exclusion of Company Listings (included under Company Profiles) from the SEI.

(2) The Covid-19 pandemic led to a high level of volatility in labour market data between April 2020 and March 2022. As a result, caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during this period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks.

(3) The applications per ad index contains a series break at Jan 2016 when the calculation of this series changed from using gross variables (inclusive of all SEEK job listings) to net variables (removing duplicate job listings). This change has a negligible impact on recent data points, but caution is recommended when interpreting data immediately following the series break, and particularly in 2016 where growth rates have not been adjusted for the series break.

Disclaimer: The Data should be viewed and regarded as standalone information and should not be aggregated with any other information whether such information has been previously provided by SEEK Limited, ("SEEK"). The Data is given in summary form and whilst care has been taken in its preparation, SEEK makes no representations whatsoever about its completeness or accuracy. SEEK expressly bears no responsibility or liability for any reliance placed by you on the Data, or from the use of the Data by you. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately. 

IMAGE CREDIT: Photo by Kampus Production.