Australians are being warned about the current job market, with applications for each role hitting record levels. This was laid bare in a recent video where dozens of people were seen lining up for a job interview at a Subway restaurant in Melbourne.
Career coach Leah Lambart told Yahoo Finance this wasn’t an issue confined to retail, hospitality, and admin jobs, and she’s seeing it in white-collar sectors as well. She warned that it’s incredibly competitive across the board at the moment.
“I think the cost of living is definitely contributing to that, where people are perhaps looking for second jobs and trying to earn more money,” she said.
SEEK’s June employment report confirmed this reality, which showed that the number of job listings had fallen 0.7 per cent month-on-month and 5.3 per cent year-on-year.
That comes as the number of applications per job has risen 2.3 per cent month-on-month.
According to the job platform, this is the highest number of applications per job on record, and surpasses the level set during the pandemic when roles were scarce.
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SEEK senior economist Blair Chapman echoed Lambart’s assessment of how the job market was being squeezed partly due to economic conditions.
“This rise [in applications per job] is due to an increased candidate pool, rather than candidates applying for more roles,” he said.
“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.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are 963,100 workers with multiple jobs in the country, which represents 6.5 per cent of employed people.
A German international student discovered how hard it is to get an entry-level role in Australia when she applied for a team worker role at a Subway restaurant.
She was shocked when she arrived at the Melbourne restaurant ready for her job interview, only to find at least 25 people waiting in front of her to do the same thing.
The student filmed the sea of people standing outside the fast food store, many of whom had their CVs safely clutched in their hands.
“I’ve never seen so many people waiting just for a job interview in my whole life,” she said in a TikTok video.
“It’s so difficult, honestly.”
Subway declined to comment when approached by Yahoo Finance.
People have been warned against quitting their current jobs without a backup organised or thought out due to the current competitive job market.
Research from Randstad showed Gen Z was driving this trend, as 49 per cent were jumping ship without another role lined up, compared to the national average of 39 per cent.
Some might think they can pick up a casual role in hospitality, retail, customer service, or admin to keep the lights on and food in the fridge while they look for another full-time gig.
But Lambart told Yahoo Finance that those short-term roles were hard to come by these days.
“Sometimes people say, ‘I’ll quit my stressful job and I’ll just get an admin job,'” she said.
“But the admin jobs are probably the hardest to get because they might have 1,000 applicants and everyone thinks they can just do an admin job.
“It’s not always as easy as they think.”
Lambart even had a client who worked at Subway with five years of experience struggle to find another role in the hospitality industry.
She encouraged people to take the old school approach and hand their CV into a workplace.
While sending off your applications online can be a good start, having that face-to-face interaction can help push your name higher on the pile.
SEEK’s data showed the Northern Territory was the only state or territory in the country that had a lift in the number of job ads on offer.
The Top End experienced a 3.7 per cent month-on-month rise in job ads.
Nationally, the construction sector was the only one to record job ad growth in June at 1.8 per cent, with rising demand in the Construction (3.8 per cent), Engineering (2.0 per cent) and Trades & Services (1.6 per cent) industries.
New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania had less than a 1 per cent drop, while Western Australia and South Australia dropped 1.2 and 1.8 per cent, respectively.
The ACT had the largest month-on-month drop of 7.8 per cent, and a year-on-year fall of 22.7 per cent.
There was a double-digit decline in some of the territory’s largest industries, including Government & Defence (11.7 per cent) and Healthcare & Medical (11.3 per cent).
Victoria had the second-largest year-on-year decline of 9.6 per cent.
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