The Christmas hiring rush disappeared in 2022, SEEK says, as annual report reveals trends from a tumultuous year

Employer appetite for full-time workers is so strong that non-permanent Christmas job listings have failed to meaningfully boost hiring numbers, SEEK says, suggesting the highly unusual economic conditions of 2022 have overpowered seasonal hiring norms.

SEEK unveiled its 2022 hiring trends report on Tuesday, highlighting insights from a year defined by extremely low unemployment, a dearth of skilled candidates, and rising cost pressures on business.

Perhaps most unusual for the platform was the seeming evaporation of contract and casual Christmas positions listed on the platform over recent months.

Employers are so hungry for workers to fill permanent positions that listings for “nonpermanent roles or ‘Christmas jobs'” did not contribute to an increase in hiring across August and September, SEEK says.

“In fact, non-permanent job ads have remained low in comparison to fluctuations recorded pre-pandemic, as businesses focus energy on securing permanent workers,” the report added.

This means the traditional Christmas hiring rush was barely present in 2022, with new hires more likely to fill long-term gaps than act as temporary festive season support.

The inverse was true across April, where hiring intentions usually fall due to the Easter and ANZAC Day public holidays.

Not so in 2022, SEEK says, with April becoming the second-highest month for job ads on record.

Record year laid out in SEEK report

Beyond the implications for businesses still hoping to acquire casual staff for December, the SEEK report digs into the deeply unusual jobs market of 2022.

Most prominent was the record number of job ads tallied in the first half of 2022, as Australian businesses emerged from the tightest Omicron-era restrictions and acquired staff stood down during the on-again, off-again lockdowns of 2021.

“For the first five months of the year, SEEK recorded the most job ads on site in its 25-year history, culminating in May with over 265,000 job ads,” the company stated.

The number of job ads on SEEK is 13.5% lower than during the May peak, but remains some 40% higher than 2019 levels.

Hospitality and tourism providers saw the greatest increase in job listings in May, rising 170.1% over the levels recorded in pre-pandemic May 2019.

Job listings in those fields remain 90.4% higher in October 2022 than in October 2019.

Four other sectors — community services and development; manufacturing, transport, and logistics; retail and consumer products; and farming, animals, and conservation — also recorded more than double the usual number of job listings in May this year.

Listings in those sectors remained elevated in October.

The SEEK data also quantifies how job listings changed over a remarkable year.

As employers scrambled to find the right workers, advertised salaries rose 2.8% between January and September this year, SEEK says.

Those findings broadly echo official Wage Price Index data, which found pay packets rose 3.1% across the board in the 12 months to September 2022.

In addition, more employers are offering sign-on bonuses to woo prospective workers.

SEEK recorded a 265% uptick in job ads referencing sign-on bonuses over the year compared to 2021, highlighting the vast difference in hiring sentiment across a matter of months.

Confirming the longevity of hybrid preferences among Australian professionals — and the lingering bargaining power workers have in a constrained labour market — SEEK said job listings featuring references to “work from home” was 11 times higher in 2022 than in 2019.