SEEK Employment Report - December
NOTE: Changes have been made to the composition of the data used in these reports, including the inclusion of company listings. Data in this report should therefore not be compared with data in previous reports. See notes at end for more information.
*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to November data.
National Insights:
- Job ads dropped 1.2% m/m, and are down 3.5% y/y.
- Applications per job ad fell 0.3% m/m, demonstrating a slightly sharper year-end decline in candidate activity than usual.
State and Territory Insights:
- All states and territories recorded m/m and y/y declines in December. The Northern Territory (-2.1%), Victoria (-1.4%) and South Australia (-1.4%) were among the larger monthly falls.
- Annually, the Australian Capital Territory (-14.7% y/y) and Northern Territory (-13.0% y/y) recorded the sharpest annual declines, while Queensland (-0.7% y/y) and Western Australia (-1.3% y/y) were comparatively resilient.
Industry Insights:
- Most major industries declined m/m in December, including Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (-1.6%), Sales (-0.7%) and Trades & Services (-0.5%).
- The three industries to record m/m growth in December were Consulting & Strategy (0.3%), Human Resources & Management (0.2%) and Sport & Recreation (0.2%).
SEEK Senior Economist, Dr Blair Chapman says:
“Job ads continued trending down in December, rounding out the softening that began in August and bringing the trend decline to 3.5% year-on-year.
“The Industrial and Construction sectors that had provided a degree of stability throughout much of the year eased in December. Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics fell 1.6% month-on-month, though demand remained 3.3% higher year-on-year. Trades & Services and Construction also softened modestly – down 0.5% and 0.3% respectively – yet continue to hold solid annual gains of 3.1% and 6.0%.
“Hiring typically slows down ahead of the Christmas and New Year period and the 2025 slowdown was a little bigger than we’ve seen historically. January traditionally brings renewed momentum into the employment market, as businesses reemerge from holiday mode. Whether the rebound in January is enough to see job ads trending up again will soon be seen.”
National Trends
National job ads fell 1.2% m/m in December, extending the softening that began in August. The annual decline is now 3.5%, compared to the 2.9% recorded in November.
The trend was broad-based, with all states and territories contributing to the monthly fall and all but three industries declined.
Applications per job ad dropped 0.3% alongside falling job ads in November, highlighting an incremental decline in candidate activity since June, albeit off a relatively high base.
Figure 1: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m with Company Listings included (blue bar) and excluded (pink dot).
State and Territory Trends
The larger states led the monthly declines, with Victoria down 1.4%, New South Wales 1.0% and Western Australia 1.0% m/m. While Victoria and New South Wales are now down over 4% y/y, Western Australia remains relatively stable y/y, down just 1.3% y/y.
Queensland recorded the most stable month in December, falling just 0.1% m/m, with rising demand in Government & Defence (3.3%), Trades & Services (1.4%) and Construction (1.3%) bolstering job ad volumes for the state.
The two territories recorded the largest decline, with the Australian Capital Territory down 14.7% and the Northern Territory falling 13.0% y/y, consistent with November’s pattern of sharper declines in smaller jurisdictions.
Over the past quarter, competition among applicants has grown the most in the smaller regions, including by 9.4% in the Northern Territory, 2.3% in Tasmania, 1.6% in the Australian Capital Territory and 1.3% in South Australia. Applications per job ad have fallen q/q in all other states.
Figure 2: State and territory job ad growth/decline comparing i) December 2025 to November 2025 (m/m) and ii) December 2025 to December 2024 (y/y).
Industry Trends
Three industries recorded monthly rises in ad volume, but in each case the growth was subdued. After also rising in November, Consulting & Strategy (0.3%) and Human Resources & Management (0.2%) lifted slightly in December, as well as Sport & Recreation (0.2%).
Demand in the Construction and Industrial sectors declined across the board m/m, with the large hiring industries including Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (-1.6%), Trades & Services (-0.5%) and Construction (-0.3%) each softening m/m, but remaining among the few industries that have grown y/y.
Consumer-facing roles declined m/m: Retail & Consumer Products dropped 2.6%, Call Centre & Customer Service was down 1.9% and Hospitality & Tourism fell 1.6%.
Ad volumes in the Public Sector have decreased both m/m and y/y, most notably within Government & Defence, which is down 16.2% since December 2024, second to Insurance & Superannuation (-16.6%) in terms of annual decline.
Table 1: Industries with annual job ad growth – December 2025 v December 2024
Figure 3: National SEEK job ad percentage change by industry (December 2025 vs November 2025) – Ordered by job ad volume
ENDS
Banner image photo by Julia Larson.
The data contained in 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.
To improve this index and continuously ensure its market accuracy, SEEK has recently implemented two main changes:
1.Reporting on trend estimates in the SEEK Employment Report rather than seasonally adjusted estimates from August 2025. Trend estimates provide a more reliable guide to the underlying direction of the data and are more suitable than either the seasonally adjusted or original estimates for business decisions. The trend estimates focus on the longer-term underlying trend and are less susceptible to short term movements. Additionally, charts have been indexed to the average of 2016 as opposed to the average of 2013.
2.The inclusion of company listings in the SEI from November 2025, to better reflect the full range of ad sources on SEEK. Company listings are job ads re-posted by SEEK from other sources and are a small portion of SEEK’s AU and NZ job volumes. The below chart shows the impact of company listings on the index, which are back dated to 2016.
The following chart shows the minimal effect from the inclusion of company listings on year-on-year growth.
The SEI may differ to the job ad count on SEEK’s website due to a number of factors including a) the trend adjustments applied to the SEI; and b) the exclusion of duplicated job ads from the SEI.
Caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during the COVID period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks.
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 ads) to net variables (removing duplicate job ads). 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.