ANZ Australian Job Ads fell 0.3% in January following a revised 5.8% drop in December.
The big-four bank noted despite the surge in Omicron cases, job ads remained 9.6% above the lows seen throughout the nationwide Delta-lockdown.
"Although ANZ Job Ads fell by 0.3% in January, they rose steeply on a weekly basis throughout the month, as is usual following the seasonal Christmas/New Year low," ANZ Senior Economist Catherine Birch said.
"This was despite the large number of Omicron cases in the community, reflecting the resilience in labour demand and the widespread view that Omicron would only be a temporary setback."
In December, the employment-to-population ratio hit record highs while both unemployment and underemployment dropped to their lowest rates since 2008.
"With the ABS job vacancy rate lifting to a record high of 2.9% in November, there’s even more tightening on the cards," Ms Birch said.
ANZ had previously forecast the unemployment rate to reach 4.4% by the end of 2022, before breaking into the 3's in 2023.
Ms Birch believes it now seems that an unemployment rate with a 3-handle, and lower underemployment, will come a lot sooner than initially forecasted in 2023.
"Our forecasts had wage growth reaching 3% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2022, but the risks now seem weighted towards an earlier acceleration," she said.
Career changes to spur greater number of job ads
ANZ previously reported the arrival of the new year saw an increase of nearly 2% of the share of Aussies planning to change jobs.
"After Omicron, we expect the job-switching rate to rise as workers change to better, higher paying jobs in 2022," Ms Birch said.
"This would mean more people quitting their current jobs, which should translate into a greater number of new job ads, raising job ads data as well as the National Skills Commission measure - so we may not have seen the peak yet."
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