In the first week of each month the ANZ Job Advertisements report is presented to the media as if it is some kind of key indicator (and predictor) of the health of the Australian economy. Two things have always struck me about this monthly event;
- Each and every month the news outlets jump on this data, and
- It is complete rubbish.
Let me explain. Anyone who has ever had anything to do with the recruitment industry knows that for numerous reasons some ads just aren’t real. They do not exist. These jobs never have existed and never will. They are creative figments of the recruiter to lure candidates into their databases. Bait to create the illusion of a talent pool to be used to further entice companies into the client list.
This is not all jobs put forward by recruiters of course but let us do some conservative assuming…
There are in this country around 10,000 recruitment consultants. Now let’s assume that just 50% of these place a bait ad every second month (50% of the time). That’s 2,500 jobs every month that never, ever existed except inside the mind of a recruiter.
Is that a big deal? 2,500 is surely not going to make any impact. Wrong. The September 2009 report had a total of 10,863 ads. That means the conservative 2,500 extra ads calculated here accounts for an error of about 25%.
I have more faith in astrology as an economic predictor than the ANZ Job Advertisement report.
For many years Reuters, one of the finest media outlets in the world, didn’t bother to even report the fiction that is the ANZ JAR. But the Australian news media is so devoid of original thinking that they pounce on these rubbery figures and say, ‘thank you, thank you ANZ PR hack for not making me have to think today.’