Pollies and their spin doctors love statistics. I should know. I worked as a media adviser for five years in Canberra and Melbourne.

As an Adelaide resume writer, I’m fascinated by the recent ABS employment figures. It’s once in a lifetime stuff. I write hard-hitting resumes to capture the attention of the most jaded and overworked recruiter.

In the May quarter last year, job vacancies fell a record 43%. This was followed by a record rise of 60% in the August quarter. The November quarter vacancies rose by a whopping 23%.

Astonishingly, manufacturing, utilities, accommodation and food services, financial services, health and social care, and arts and recreation, recorded the highest number of vacancies in a quarter since such records began in 2009.

Even so, many people still haven’t gone back to work in the CBDs and there’s a knock-on effect running through city-based small businesses.

Consider too that the recovery in large part, is being led by causal and part time workers. But still, any port in a storm.

Whether we will ever return to the full time job numbers remains to be seen. Casualisation was on the rise before the virus hit.

This doesn’t mean we’re going to have a record level of employment but it does means the nation is slowly climbing out of the recession.

The fight for jobs remains tougher than it was prior to the pandemic – and that was very tough!

My great concern is for the hundreds of thousands of people in small business, when the JobKeeper subsidy is removed in March, and if the virus strikes harder this winter.