SEEK Employment Report - June
NOTE: This report includes SEEK’s seasonally adjusted data as well as trend data. Where not otherwise specified, the commentary, figures and tables in this report refer to the seasonally adjusted data. From next month, this report will refer only to the trend series data (not the seasonally adjusted data) and incorporate ad volumes from aggregated ads. See notes 2, 3 and 4 at end for more information about this.
*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to May data.
National Insights
Job ads fell 0.7% m/m seasonally adjusted, and 0.3% based on trend, making it a second month of marginal decline.
Applications per job ad rose 2.1% m/m and are now at the highest level on record.
State and Territory Insights
The Northern Territory was the only region to record m/m job ad growth (3.7%).
At -7.8%, the Australian Capital Territory recorded the largest m/m decline, due to falling demand for workers in Information & Communication Technology and Healthcare & Medical, among other industries.
Industry Insights
The Construction Sector recorded the most growth m/m, with rising demand for Construction (3.8%), Engineering (2.0%) and Trades & Services (1.6%) workers.
A 2.0% decline in demand for Healthcare & Medical workers drove the overall decline in June.
SEEK Senior Economist, Dr Blair Chapman says:
"With the year-on-year decline in ad volume hovering around 5.5% over the past quarter, this is the most stable job ads have been for some time.
“On the other side of the market, applications per job ad have never been higher, and have now surpassed the peak recorded in 2020 when job ads were at their lowest. This rise is due to an increased candidate pool, rather than candidates applying for more roles.
“Over the past couple of years more Australians have taken on a second job, or are looking to do so, and more workers have entered or re-entered the workforce. This is likely in response to increased living costs, and as a result, competition is extremely strong for most available roles.”
National Trends
Job ads fell just 0.7% m/m seasonally adjusted, marking a second month of marginal decline after dropping 0.2% in May. The trend data shows that ad volumes have been relatively stable for over a quarter, declining at 0.3% or 0.2% y/y since February.
Applications per job ad rose 2.1% m/m, and are 16.4% higher y/y, bringing them to the highest level on record.
Figure 1: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m (June 2024 to June 2025)
State and Territory Trends
Aside from the Northern Territory, where job ads rose 3.7% m/m, ad volumes fell across the board in June.
On the eastern seaboard, the monthly drop was only marginal, with Victoria down 0.8%, New South Wales down 0.4% and Queensland down 0.3%.
Job ad volumes rose very slightly in regional areas m/m (0.3%), due to rising demand in the Construction and Industrial sectors outside of the cities. In metro areas job ads fell, down 1.1%.
Job ads fell to the largest degree in the Australian Capital Territory (-7.8%) where there was double-digit decline in some of the largest industries, including Government & Defence (-11.7%), and Healthcare & Medical (-11.3%). The territory has also recorded the largest annual decline (-22.7%).
Competition among candidates rose in most states and the Australian Capital Territory, with applications per job ad increasing in Western Australian (4%), South Australia (3%) and Queensland (3%).
Figure 2: State and territory job ad growth/decline comparing i) June 2025 to May 2025 (m/m) and ii) June 2025 to June 2024 (y/y).
Figure 3: Major state job ad change over time: June 2021 to June 2025.
Industry Trends
The Construction sector was the only sector to record job ad growth in June (1.8%) with rising demand in the Construction (3.8%), Engineering (2.0%) and Trades & Services (1.6%) industries.
Despite some growth in pockets within Professional Services, including Marketing & Communications (3.4%), Accounting (2.1%) and Science & Technology (0.5%), holistically the sector declined 1.7% m/m.
After jumping 8.9% in May, Consulting & Strategy dropped 11.8% in June, together with Legal (4.4%) and Banking & Financial Services (3.1%), leading to the overall decline in the Professional Services Sector.
Ad volumes in Information & Communication Technology continue to decline (-3.5% m/m and -10.5% y/y) and are now the lowest on record, falling below COVID levels.
Table 1: Sector growth/ decline m/m and y/y.
Figure 4: National SEEK job ad percentage change by industry (June 2025 vs May 2025) – Ordered by job ad volume
The full data for this report can be found here.
Header photo by Burst.
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 aggregated ads from the SEI.
(2) Seasonally Adjusted figures remove regular calendar-related patterns from the data (e.g. Christmas holiday period). The seasonal adjustment is applied by a statistical model widely used by official statisticians (e.g. Australian Bureau of Statistics). This helps show month-on-month changes without seasonal distortions.
(3) Trend figures go a step further by applying a weighted moving average to the seasonal adjusted figures (using a 13-term Henderson moving average) to smooth out short-term fluctuations and noise. The trend numbers help identify the longer-term direction by filtering out both seasonal effects and short-term volatility.
(4) From August 2025 onwards, aggregated ads will be included in the SEI to better reflect the full range of ad sources on SEEK (back dated to their inception, March 2022). Aggregated ads are re-posted by SEEK from other sources and are a small portion of SEEK’s ANZ job volumes.
(5) Caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during the COVID period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks.
(6) 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.