Aussie jobs to be slashed in new year

Australia's unemployment rate will rise next year with around 100,000 jobs set to be slashed in the months after Christmas.

Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said that leading indicators point to very weak employment growth in the new year, the Daily Telegraph reported.

"We would expect the unemployment rate to edge up to 5.75 over the next six months," Mr Evans told the newspaper.

"But on the flipside, the Reserve Bank would have to cut the cash rate by at least half a per cent to counter (the job losses)."

Figures from research group CoreData suggest the number of unemployed Australians will rise by 106,000 next year as the unemployment rate rises to a predicted 5.57 percent.

"One in five Australians now think they are going to lose their jobs in the next 12 months," said CoreData boss Andrew Inwood.

"That's particularly true in all industries outside finance and mining. Interestingly, our research has found levels of Australian confidence in the economy for the first quarter of 2012 is looking to be roughly the same as it was at the height of the global financial crisis."

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