SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian job advertisements in newspapers and on the internet fell in December after a couple of months of solid gains, a survey showed on Tuesday, suggesting some cooling in what has been a very strong labour market.
A monthly survey by Australia and New Zealand Banking Group <ANZ.AX> showed total job advertisements dropped 2.3 percent in December, from November when they rose 1.1 percent.
The average total number of ads per week was 167,656, still up a healthy 11.4 percent compared to last year.
ANZ's head of Australian economics, David Plank, cautioned that December was often a volatile month for ads given the holidays. Ads fell 1.8 percent in December 2016 but more than recovered in January.
"For this reason we are not unduly worried around the drop in December job ads," said Plank.
Still, a slowdown in the trend growth of ads could herald a similar change for the official jobs numbers.
"We believe that, after 14 straight months of growth, employment has overshot the levels implied by job ads and as such a period of moderation in jobs growth is likely," said Plank.
Jobs growth surged past all expectations last year, according to the official measure of employment, nudging the jobless rate down to 5.4 percent.
Yet wage growth stayed unusually tepid at just 2.0 percent, dragging on household incomes and consumer spending power.
(Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Sam Holmes)
