By Stuart Condie

SYDNEY--Australian job advertiser Seek will have to wait to see whether a potential global trade war or local interest-rate cuts have any impact on demand for its services, according to its chief executive.

Seek draws the majority of its revenue from Australia and New Zealand, but also has Asian operations including in Hong Kong and the Philippines.

While first-half volumes were down 14% both domestically and in Asia, Seek hasn't discerned any impact on hiring activity related to U.S. trade tariffs. An additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods took effect early this month, with President Trump suggesting more could follow.

"If you just think about how the real world works, people don't tend to make knee-jerk decisions the next day," CEO Ian Narev said Tuesday. "We need to keep an eye on it right through Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia over coming months."

Narev said his conversations with staff and customers on a recent visit to Indonesia suggested that tariffs weren't a factor in current hiring decisions.

"It's not heavily on people's minds. People are not talking about what's happening in the U.S. every day, so these things sort of take a while to flow through--if they're going to flow through."

Seek was able to largely offset the impact of lower volumes on December-half revenue through pricing-linked yield growth and efficiency gains stemming from a multiyear tech overhaul, which was completed a year earlier ahead of schedule and under budget.

The drop in hiring continues a retreat in volumes over recent years, following a Covid-era boom during which companies hired back furloughed workers, and even expanded amid government stimulus and rebounding consumer spending.

The employment marketplace recently said that December ads were down 3% compared with November, and more than 12% from a year earlier. Australia's unemployment rate has remained low even as the country's central bank resisted joining the global move to lower interest rates.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was at 4.0% in December, exactly where it was a year earlier.

The Reserve Bank of Australia is widely expected to start cutting interest rates Tuesday, just as other global banks' moves toward looser policy are coming under threat from the inflationary impact of tariffs. Economists and banks have said a cut from the RBA could improve business sentiment, potentially leading to more job creation.

Seek released its first-half result hours ahead of the decision, narrowing its annual guidance ranges for revenue, earnings and profit. Narev said Seek would have issued the same outlook whatever the RBA decides to do with rates at its February meeting.

"People have to absorb it and decide what they're going to do," Narev said. "So the question would be 'Would we be seeing any benefits by the end of the year?' I don't think it would change a whole lot."

Write to Stuart Condie at stuart.condie@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 17, 2025 20:20 ET (01:20 GMT)

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