Koerner

UNEMPLOYMENT is set to drop further with how many job openings climbing to record amounts, fuelling speculation of another interest rise.

National job openings in the 3 months to August rose 2.9 %, seasonally modified, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Work opportunities rose by 11.9 % in the year to August.

CommSec shares economist Martin Arnold said with job opportunities now at a record high, the unemployment rate was set to fall below 4 per cent - from its present 4.3 per cent - as bosses were encouraged by business conditions to seek more staff.

"The Australian economy is saving stable growth and business problems are essentially as effective as they get," he said.

The strength of the economy led a frustrated John Howard to state people was failing woefully to supply the government credit for financial management.

"I think there is a view in the community... Yesterday perhaps an important amount that, for somehow or another, our economic power and our growth and economic stability is happening naturally, that the economy is on autopilot," the Prime Minister told a forum at Ocean Grove on the Victorian coast.

He said this was one of many reasoned explanations why the federal government was performing so poorly in the public opinion polls: "I think individuals are needs to get the Australian economy for granted."

Seasonally-adjusted work vacancies totalled 172,700 in the 90 days to August.

Mr Arnold said there have been under three unemployed people for every empty job, the lowest level on record.

Company services has been one of many best development areas, with 45,200 opportunities, 28.4 per cent more than a year before.

The amount of positions vacant in the communications industry has significantly more than doubled to 2800 in the same time.

There clearly was strong demand for labour in the transport companies, retail trade and building.

Areas that look like less desperate for staff include food, adventure and personal services.

The public sector is continuing to develop, with the amount of vacant jobs 11.8 % higher than this past year.

In the season to August, job openings in the increase state of Western Australia were up by 31.8 per cent, unadjusted, adopted by the ACT, that was up 31 per cent.

Only Queensland had a decline, with year-on-year openings down 3.3 percent.

Matthew Johnson, the senior economist at specialist ICAP, said the increase in jobs openings must offer employment growth greater than 2 %.

"This suggests that unemployment will probably drop lower, and that everyone else from the Reserve Bank down will continue steadily to fret about wage-push inflation," he explained.

High job openings and low unemployment is just a conventional formula for inflation, with a limit to exactly how many jobs may be filled.

There has, up to now, been number evidence of wage inflation, with the average cost of labour rising largely in line with prices in the economy. Another inflation numbers are published on October 24.

UBS chief economist Scott Haslem said the growth in job vacancies would subscribe to higher inflation in the ultimate months of 2007. He believed the Reserve Bank would increase rates of interest in February 2008 to avoid inflation planning above the RBA's 3 per cent target range.

But Mr Arnold said the increase in labour supply, via qualified migration, wouldn't create wages pressures. BabyCenter