Australia's labour market is not expanding as quickly as official figures suggest, according to HSBC, but jobs growth in service industries is more than compensating for the mining downturn.
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Chief economist for Australia Paul Bloxham says in a note on Thursday that a calculation based on advertisements and vacancies suggests a net 340,000 jobs were created over 2014 and 2015, compared with Australian Bureau of Statistics survey estimates of 477,000.
The bank also developed a predictive labour market index which shows steady growth in jobs since mid-2013, albeit at a slower pace than the official rate.
But nor is the ABS way off, according to Bloxham, despite changes in its methodology which may have distorted an already-volatile monthly statistics series.
"While the month-to-month changes are therefore difficult to interpret, there is a clear trend in the numbers," he wrote.
"After annual growth of just 0.2 per cent in 2013 and 1.5 per cent in 2014, the number of people in work rose by 2.6 per cent in 2015; equivalent to just over 300,000 jobs in the past year."
Australia's official, seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate is 5.8 per cent, down sharply from 6.3 per cent in July last year.
HSBC says the actual jobless rate is probably a bit higher than this, given that labour market growth appears to be outstripping expansion in gross domestic product.
"A possible explanation is that GDP is understated and will be revised up," he said.
"Another possibility is that the official jobs numbers are somewhat overstated."
Another element in this disconnect could be the changing composition of the labour force, as the transition to more labour intensive positions in finance, healthcare, social services, education and real estate compensates for the downturn in resource-related activity and manufacturing, while adding less relative value to output.
This is partly because wages in the non-mining economy are, on average, 40 per cent lower than those in resources-related activity.
This, too, was keeping a lid on wages inflation, which left scope for the Reserve Bank of Australia to cut the cash rate to 1.75 per cent this year, said Bloxham.
"As more jobs are created in the services sectors and employment is cut back in the mining industry, there is likely to be further downward pressure on wages growth," he wrote.
This combined, with another bounce in unemployment, could force the RBA's hand, he said.
"Low inflation combined with an expected pullback in the official labour market numbers may give the RBA fewer excuses not to consider a further cash rate cut."
Australia and New Zealand Banking group senior economist Justin Fabo agrees the current unemployment rate may not reflect the true state of the job market.
"Our assessment is that the unemployment rate may be modestly underestimating current spare capacity," he wrote in a research note this week.
At the same time, he said distorted perceptions of the job market's fragility may have added to the other forces keeping wages down.
"Firms [and workers] appear to have been keen to forgo higher wage increases so as to preserve jobs," he wrote.
"Elevated unemployment expectations compared with actual unemployment may also have been a factor," he said.