Payroll jobs rose in the first half of October as COVID-19 restrictions eased in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said payroll jobs rose by 1.3 per cent in the fortnight to October 16, which followed a fall of 0.5 per cent in the previous two weeks.
"Payroll jobs increased through the first half of October, as lockdowns and other restrictions eased," ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said.
The most notable changes were in NSW, where payrolls rose 3.5 per cent, while they were up 2.4 per cent in the ACT and 0.8 per cent higher in Victoria.
The report comes ahead of Thursday's full labour force report for October.
Economists' forecasts for October point to the unemployment rate rising to 4.8 per cent compared to 4.6 per cent in September, as more people sought work post-lockdowns.
Australian employers appear to be gearing up for a strong employment recovery after the lockdowns put a huge dent in the labour market.
Employers are busily trying to hire staff with online job advertiser SEEK reporting the highest number of ads in a month in its 23-year-plus history.
"A combination of the lifting of restrictions in our two largest employment markets, NSW and Victoria, along with businesses getting ready for what will hopefully be a bumper holiday period has had a huge impact on this month's job ad volumes," ANZ managing director Kendra Banks said.
Job ads jumped 10.2 per cent in October and 63.2 per cent higher than a year earlier and 44 per cent up on October 2019 and prior to the pandemic.
The biggest growth in the month was among the jurisdictions coming out lockdown with NSW up 20.3 per cent, the ACT rising 19 per cent and Victoria 16.3 per cent higher.
Against this positive backdrop, a large majority of Australians intend to spend the same amount of money or more this Christmas shopping season than last year.
The Westpac-Melbourne Institute monthly consumer sentiment survey for November found just 26 per cent of respondents intend to spend less this festive season.
This was the smallest proportion since the question was first added to the survey in 2009.
About one-in-10 said they intend to spend more, while just over 60 per cent said they would spend the same.
"It seems that consumers are determined not to allow their spending to slip back further while at the same time being cautious about over-extending," Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said.
The survey found confidence rising 0.6 per cent in November to an index of 105.3 and comfortably above the 100-mark which indicates optimists outweigh pessimists.
"In recent months the success of vaccination rollouts has underpinned a confident consumer despite being in lockdown," Mr Evans said.
Separately, digital credit reporting agency CreditorWatch has warned business failures are likely to rise again once retail banks and the Australian Taxation Office stop being so lenient on debt collection as they have been during the pandemic.
Earlier this week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg jumped on figures suggesting a slew of business failures had been avoided during the pandemic, saying this was further proof Australia's economic recovery is on track.
"Eventually, this situation will normalise, and defaults, court actions and administrations will return to more typical pre-COVID levels," CreditorWatch CEO Patrick Coghlan said.
