According to the LMIP's Vacancy Report:
The IVI [Internet Vacancy Index] is the only publicly available source of detailed data on online vacancies, including for around 350 occupations (at all skill levels), as well as for all states/territories and 37 regions. The IVI is based on a count of online job advertisements newly lodged on SEEK, CareerOne and Australian JobSearch during the month. As such, the IVI does not reflect the total number of job advertisements in the labour market as it does not include jobs advertised through other online job boards, employer websites, word of mouth, in newspapers, and advertisements in shop windows. The IVI also does not take account of multiple positions being advertised in a single job advertisement.
The IVI has been used in the media quite a lot this year, to predict what is happening in the Australian employment marketing during and through the recovery from COVID-19. It is a useful source of information, however the data needs to be interpreted with reference to what the IVI includes and what it doesn’t include.
As the data is collected in the same way each month, if employers are similarly likely over time to advertise vacancies online, it is a good measure of overall vacancies. It can tell us how the labour market is trending overall.
This data set can not tell us the total number of vacancies in the labour market, or the number of people who will be hired from the vacancies. If there are differences between occupations/industries in terms of how employers hire people, then we can’t directly compare those areas – but we can compare the upwards or downwards trends.
The IVI can be broken down to industry, occupation, and state. The LMIP has information dating back to 2006 so we can examine trends in vacancies.
It is best to think of this index as an indicator of which direction the employment market is moving. As we have seen this year, things can change very rapidly and these data sets can give an indication of what might happen but can’t predict everything.
This data, updated monthly, can be found on the LMIP.