It is consistent with the overall decline in employment advertising economy-wide which also suffered a 1% decline.

Given the relatively small changes it is difficult to draw any major conclusions, however, it is worth noting the green job sector has been more resilient over a full-year term with overall national employment advertising down 5.8%, compared to a drop of 3% for green jobs.

While a 3% drop over 12 months seems a fair result in comparison to the total economy, the real concern lies in the fact that green job advertising peaked this year in March and in just 3 months from the peak has dropped 14%.

New South Wales and Victoria have dropped 10% and 12% respectively but Queensland has registered a huge drop of 30% over the same period.

Only Western Australia has managed to make any real meaningful gains (up 9%).

Perhaps the change of Queensland state government has had a major impact on sentiment, as there has been very little in the way of tariff reductions or policy changes that would influence such a sharp drop.

While the longer term trend is positive, the sharp declines in this quarter are a major cause of concern – for both green jobs (-14%) and the wider employment market (-8%).

This article first appeared in BEN-Global