The latest employment figures suggest it has recently become harder to find a job in Victoria, with job vacancies falling and the number of job seekers rising.
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Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show there were 66,800 job vacancies in Victoria in November, down from 72,000 in August.
The drop was seen in the private sector, which had 5200 fewer job vacancies in November than August.
Numbers of public job vacancies remained steady.
The number of unemployed also fell between August and November, by 7.6 per cent, but the cohort of unemployed people seeking full-time or part-time work grew.
The number of people who looked for both full-time and part-time work rose from 69,800 in August to 76,400 in November, a jump of 8.6 per cent.
There was a 3.5 per cent decrease in the number of people seeking only part-time work, but demand for full-time work grew, with the number of people looking for only these positions rising by 3 per cent.
But Vaughan Adams, central region general manager of CVGT Australia, said vacancies in the apprenticeship and traineeship sphere had “remained fairly high”.
Mr Adams said there was typically an increase in applications from prospective apprentices and trainees in October and November, because school was finishing and leavers were looking for work.
Employers, he said, tended to look for such staff at the start of the year, because it coincided with the beginning of trade school.
But overall in the year to November 2018, job vacancies in Victoria grew by 16.2 per cent, while the number of unemployed people seeking full-time or part-time work fell by 16 per cent.
Across Australia, the number of job vacancies rose in the quarter to November last year, but the rate of growth did slow down.
In August, growth was at 2.7 per cent, and the previous November 5.5 per cent.