This is despite new job ads increasing by 15% and 12% in New South Wales and Victoria respectively.

Western Australia recorded a 4.7% fall in job ad volume for January when compared to December last year, the fifth consecutive monthly fall for the state.

Seek employment managing director Michael Ilczynski said the ad drop in WA demonstrated the widespread effect of the mining downturn.

“A current snapshot of the Western Australia labour market highlights that the areas of growth are limited to just a few industries,” Ilczynski said.  

“Sports and recreation, legal, education, general management and science and technology are the only industries that have shown year on year growth.”

Conversely, New South Wales recorded its sixth successive rise in month-to-month growth in January. The state currently has 13.1% more jobs advertised than a year earlier.

Ilczynski said the job increases on the east spanned a number of industries but that drill and blast and mining operations were also showing double digit year-on-year growth.

“We’ve seen a big jump in demand for specialists in oil and gas production and refinement however this a relatively small employing sector,” he said.

“There is a larger scale demand for labour in drill and blast roles, with hundreds of opportunities, as well as in operations roles where there are thousands of advertised opportunities currently needing to be filled.”