SEEK Employment Report - May
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. See notes 2 and 3 on p. 6 for more information about the difference between the two data sets.
*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to April data.
National Insights:
Job ads declined 0.3% m/m seasonally adjusted, but rose 0.3% based on trend. This is the second consecutive month where the trend data has risen, after three years of decline.
The annual rate of decline continues to slow, down 5.6% y/y.
State and Territory Insights:
Three states recorded an increase in m/m ad volume in May: South Australia (0.5%), New South Wales (0.4%) and Victoria (0.4%).
After jumping 7.6% m/m in April, Queensland recorded a 0.8% drop in ad volume in May, and was the greatest contributor to the national decline.
Industry Insights:
The fastest growing industries were some of the smallest: Consulting & Strategy (5.4% m/m) and Design & Architecture (3.0% m/m).
Consumer Services led the overall decline for the industries in May, with Administration & Office Support (-5.5%) and Hospitality & Tourism (-4.1%) among those with the largest drops m/m.
SEEK Senior Economist, Dr Blair Chapman says:
"Job ad volumes remained relatively steady in May, declining just 0.3% month-on-month, seasonally adjusted.
“Looking at the trend data, ad volumes have now risen for the past two months, marking the first rise in three years. Regardless, our data points to a slowdown in the decline the market has been experiencing since mid-2022.
"While some consumer-facing industries like Hospitality & Tourism and Administration & Office Support softened in May, this was offset by growth in professional services sectors such as Consulting & Strategy and Design & Architecture which are among the few industries which have recorded growth over the past few months.”
National Trends
Job ads declined just 0.3% m/m, representing a relatively stable period for ad volumes in comparison to the past few months. At -5.6% y/y this is the slowest rate of annual decline in over two years, further indicating a market that is stabilising slowly.
Applications per job ad rose 1.2% m/m, and have grown 4.6% over the past quarter, demonstrating that while ad volumes are stabilising in their decline, candidate appetite for the roles available continues to grow to near-record levels.
Figure 1: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m (May 2024 to May 2025)
State and Territory Trends
Three states recorded growth in May. South Australia led with a 0.5% rise in job ads, while New South Wales and Victoria both recorded modest 0.4% gains.
This marks a third month of slow but steady growth in South Australia. Annually, South Australia is the only state or territory where ad volumes have grown y/y (6.1%), due to increased demand for workers in the Industrial and Construction sectors.
While small, an 0.8% fall in Queensland’s ad volumes drove the national decline in May. This marks a recalibration for the state after greater fluctuation the past two months following Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
The two territories recorded the largest drops in ad volume for the month, with the Northern Territory down 3.3% and the Australian Capital Territory falling 1.7%.
South Australia is the only state or territory where applications per job ad have declined, down 0.1% m/m and 0.6% y/y. In Tasmania applications per ad have grown 47.3% y/y and they have grown 37.3% y/y in the Australian Capital Territory.
Figure 2: State and territory job ad decline comparing i) May 2025 to April 2025 (m/m) and ii) May 2025 to May 2024 (y/y)
Figure 3: Major state job ad change over time: May 2021 to May 2025. Index = 100 (2013 average)
Industry Trends
There were large m/m declined in the Consumer Services sector May. This was led by a 5.5% drop in demand for Administration & Office Support workers and a 4.1% fall in Hospitality & Tourism, after demand surged 8.7% in April. Other notable declines included Engineering (-6.3%) and Retail & Consumer Products (-4.7%).
Several smaller industries bucked the national trend, with Consulting & Strategy recording the strongest m/m growth (5.4%), followed by Design & Architecture (3.0%) and Banking & Financial Services (2.5%). Mining, Resources & Energy also posted a modest 1.4% rise.
Table 1: Sector growth/ decline m/m and y/y.
Taking an annual perspective, Education & Training recorded the steepest drop by job ad volume (-16.2%), while Engineering (-23.2%) and Healthcare and Medical (-6.8%) were also significant. However, certain small industries continue to outperform the broader market, with Sport & Recreation up 8.3% y/y and Design & Architecture rising 6.3% y/y.
Applications per ad jumped 10% m/m for Retail & Consumer Products jobs, 5% for Education & Training and 3% for Trades & Services.
Figure 4: National SEEK job ad percentage change by industry (May 2025 vs April 2025) – Ordered by job ad volume
ENDS
The full data for this report can be found here.
Header photo by Christina Morillo.
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) 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) Caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during the COVID period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks.
(5) 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.